


Heart of Song and Starlight

by RerumTechnologies



Series: Heart of the Mountain [1]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, BAMF Bilbo Baggins, Battle of Five Armies, But also, Cabbage Patch Hobbits, Dwarves Love Shiny Things, Elves Love Shiny Things, Eventual Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Heart of the Mountain AU, Hobbits Don't Exist, M/M, Ravens, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, Thranduil Not Being An Asshole, and then, more like no burn, semi-quick burn, the heart of the mountain is bilbo, yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2020-07-28 20:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RerumTechnologies/pseuds/RerumTechnologies
Summary: Based uponthisprompt"No, YOU listen, you great stone headed Dwarf. I am Bilbo Baggins of the Lonely Mountain and Mizimith of Ravenhill. This is MY home and you are a guest in it. Behave yourself or face the consequences."Or in which the Arkenstone is a person instead of a shiny rock and that person is Bilbo Baggins and he's not gonna let some Dwarves ruin his mountain with WAR of all things.With an accidental similarity to Rapunzel, my bad.





	1. Auspicious from Beginning to End to Beginning Again

**Author's Note:**

> So! It's my birthday and in true Hobbit fashion I'd like to give ya'll a gift! I'll be posting every two weeks (sorry!) on here and on my tumblr (same url). Sorry it's so short but I promise the rest won't be this brief. I hope you guys enjoy and please please please leave a comment on your way out! :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is "A Star is Born" from Hercules because how can I resist that pun, guys c'mon.

_“It is a wonderful lesson. It comes at an auspicious time. The old world was getting tired, it seemed, and needed help to whip it into action.” – The Dayton Daily_

The first thing he knew was his mother’s voice. Except, he wasn’t exactly himself when he first knew it. He was potential in the shining light of the Two Trees, separated and cultivated into being by Fëanor. He was aware, in the way that objects of great power are, of the death of his previous incarnation – of the death of his potential brothers and sisters. The devouring of the Two Trees by Ungoliant was something he never wanted to remember, and so he didn’t.

He and his brother and sister were all that was left of the Two Trees. His brother remained a shining silver star on the brow of the Valar, another gift for the elves. His sister was cast into the sea, her silver and gold light like a burning sun on the ocean floor, and he was clutched to the breast of Fëanor’s eldest son as they both plunged into the fiery depths of the earth.

For a very long time, he waited and watched. He didn’t know what exactly he was waiting for, but he liked to watch. He watched the fire calm, and the earth settle until he could feel a mountain shaping around his resting place. He watched the body of Maedhros, son of Fëanor, dissolve into the earth until not even his bones held their shape. He was content for a while – a very long time by even the elves’ standards – but eventually, he grew lonely. Even the echoes of Yavanna’s song in the soil couldn’t ease him.

It was then that he felt dwarves enter his mountain.

They were only on his periphery at first, testing the stone and soil. But soon they began to blast into the rock, forging what would be a magnificent kingdom into his mountain. He welcomed the noise and the passion they carried with them.

He received his first name when he saw his first dwarf. Thráin, son of Náin, named him Heart of the Mountain. Somehow the dwarves shaped him, so he shone even brighter, not only with his golden brilliance but also with whatever light he happened to catch. He felt a kinship to the dwarves and their love of the earth. They gave him more names as the years went by; King’s Jewel and Arkenstone. He grew to love them and worried that the curse of his light would corrupt the heart of their king.

Heart of the Mountain despaired when it did.

The greed his light evoked took one mind and then another. It was poisoning a third when their kingdom fell, and Heart met his first dragon.

“Met” was a bit of a stretch. He only saw the wyrm once. Fromrís, wife of Thráin, son of Thrór, took him from his place above the throne at the King's behest. As she rushed through the tunnels of his mountain Heart felt a great slithering evil thing move towards them. And suddenly heat enveloped them, and a scream of terror the likes of which Heart of the Mountain had never witnessed fell from the Princess’ lips.

Perhaps it was her fear that made him flare, or perhaps it was the all-consuming hunger coming from the great beast that reminded him so much of the fires into which Maedhros had first flung them both. But no matter the reason Heart’s light shone as it never had since he had been siphoned from the Two Trees.

The dragon bellowed and recoiled. The Princess of his mountain did not hesitate to dash away.

It was in late Queen’s rooms that she found her crying daughter. Heart of the Mountain softened his light to a comforting glow when the Princess gathered them both close. Words were spoken over him, whispered in the language of his dwarves, and he was lowered back into the earth of his mountain again, the two Princesses laying their hands atop the packed soil. Heart of the Mountain could not hear the hushed words Fromrís spoke to her daughter, but they must have hidden him in some way. Otherwise, the dragon would surely have found him.

Instead, he lay buried in the dead Queen’s garden while Fromrís was burned alive and his dwarves fled their home.

The dragon was not like the dwarves. He did not lust after gold and jewels as they did; with hearts full of pride and minds full of heritage. The firedrake’s need for treasure was ugly and desperate and left little room for better things. Heart of the Mountain didn't know why the beast ignored him, but the monster simply collected all other riches and settled down to sleep.

Heart was lonely again for a long time until his mother spoke to him.

Yavanna had not sung to him since he existed in the Two Trees and was only potential in the light of their leaves. She sang to him now. She sang of the dwarves and let him feel their love for him and his mountain, she sang of the hardships they faced and the courage they had. She sang so sweetly it was a long while before he realized his light was dimming.

Or, Heart thought, it wasn’t dimming so much as turning inward, filling that hollowed space and shaping into something else.

His mother answered his unasked question.

She sang of a King Under the Mountain who would come to him, bringing dwarves back into his arms. She sang of a battle of five armies, terrible because the king and his heirs would fall. His mother sang of a little creature the king would meet, fussy and small – even smaller than a dwarf – but who would not be cowed. Yavanna sang of how this little creature could save Durin’s folk. She sang, “_The sons of Durin must live,_” and Heart believed her.

She sang until he was born again, into a small creature with soft skin and hard feet and a head full of golden curls. She sang one of the last names he would ever have.

_Bilbo Baggins._

And because no creature should have memories of previous lives, Bilbo Baggins forgot what it was like to be Heart of the Mountain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, ya'll may have noticed the Arkenstone does not shine like the moon or whatever. That's because Bilbo is not silver and it would look weird if this brown haired little hobbit started shining silver. Sorry for the folks who really liked the silver Arkenstone (cough Thorin cough) but for this tale it is gold. His eyes still shine all rainbow-y though, like in the movie-version of the Arkenstone.
> 
> P.S. I actually do not have songs for all these chapters, but if you guys think of one totally tell me, I'm always up for new music.
> 
> Leave a comment on your way out and may you find many happy OTPs and AUs!


	2. In Company of Ravens and Wyrms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What exactly has Bilbo been doing for fifty years?

_"This isn't about the Ravens. This is about you. This is about everything it took you to get to this point, everything it cost you, and everyone who laughed when you dared to dream of something big and bright." – Nora Sakavic _

Bilbo Baggins did not know much beyond his garden, his kitchen, and his library. He was content to spend his days drifting from one to the other, ignoring the dragon that was sleeping next door and the maze of tunnels that seemed to be part of the mountain, like he was. What was the point of worrying, he often thought, when he couldn't leave to see either of them anyway?

His garden was as old as he was. It began to truly thrive shortly before his first birthday when he realized he had a talent for growing things. He had first woken in the ground, naked and cold with only the memory of music in his head, on a chilly day in early fall. It made sense to him that he should be good at coaxing other things from whence he came. He had been small, smaller than a fawn the day of his birth, not even tall enough to see past the low shrubs lining his birthplace, dotted with spiky blue flowers.

On the first day of his life, he crawled out of the fresh wet earth on the side of a great mountain. His mountain. There were plants all around him, carrots and cabbage, snowbells and fire lilies, parsley and basil, and more. A tall apple tree stood in the corner, surrounded by lilacs and roses, red fruit gleaming in the morning sunlight. He got up out of the dirt, shaking the darkness from his hair and blinking away his blinding first glimpse of sunshine. He toddled over to the tree, following his stomach. Bilbo picked an apple up from beneath the tree, and it was then he saw the barren land beyond his garden.

As far as his young eyes could see was unhealthy pale, cracked dirt, nothing like the rich brown earth from which he'd just climbed. The lifelessness emanating from the scorched landscape brought tears to Bilbo's eyes. He backed away from the edge of his garden, fear and sadness making him tremble. Who could have done such a terrible thing? Would they come after the garden next?

When a breeze nipped at his bare skin, Bilbo scurried back, turning again toward the middle of the garden wiping his eyes and noticing, on the opposite side, an open archway. He munched on his apple while he explored the lavish room it led to.

It was only two rooms, as far as he could tell, and the first one was big, bigger than Bilbo thought he could ever need. The deep blue rug just beyond where dirt became stone was long and rectangular, soft under his furry feet, and stretched to a similarly coloured rug that lay in front of the fireplace and under the furniture there. A bed with thick blankets and furs, and dozens of dark fluffy pillows took up the far-left corner, and at the foot sat a long ornate chest that looked to be the perfect height for him to climb onto to reach the bed. Along the same wall as the bed and to his left was a stone basin and a pump, set too high for him to use. Shelves reached even higher on either side, the bottom rows filled with dishes and cutlery and the top two with books. Just beside the bed on the far wall was a huge carved wardrobe. Its handles curved up just out of Bilbo's reach when he stretched for them, huffing in frustration. Bilbo glared and took another bite of his apple.

The right side of the room was nearly taken up by the fireplace in the centre of the wall, a great stone thing with pans and pots and kettles of all types hanging neatly around its mantle. In front of it, taking up much of the space in the middle of the room, were two plush chairs and a long sofa big enough for eight of him! The chair farthest from the garden and facing it was worn and draped with furs and blankets like the bed. There was a book laying on its arm like someone had just gotten up and would be coming back to finish.

The second room was smaller. Its door lay to the right of the garden entrance. Bilbo left the warmth of the rug and stepped onto the cold stone to wander in feeling the stone change to tile. A pool was sunken into the centre, its edge lined with jewels. They glittered dimly in the secondhand sunlight. In the farthest and dimmest corner of the room was a stone latrine, empty by the smell of it. Another pump sat on the side of the pool, pointed in. Towels and soaps lined the edge like loyal sentries. Clothes were piled next to the pump as though waiting for their owners to return.

When Bilbo turned back toward the big room to maybe get more to eat from the garden, he caught sight of the door. If it hadn't been open, he would not have been able to pick it out from the geometric mosaic on the wall across from the latrine.

He didn't get the chance to see what was in the other room because a croak sounded behind him and Bilbo twisted so fast, he lost his balance and plopped on his rear on the tile floor, barely managing to keep a hold on his apple.

He whimpered and screwed up his face in discomfort. The floor was cold and rough on his naked skin. He hurriedly picked himself back up, grabbing a plain white shift from the pile of clothes as he did and pulling it over himself with clumsy fingers. It pooled around his hairy feet and hung much too far past his arms, but he held his arms up to the sky, so the sleeves fell to his elbows and then hiked up the bottom with one hand, so he could continue to investigate the new noise.

The big room seemed empty when he peeked through the doorway. But after a moment a large black bird glided in from the garden. It croaked again, hopping around as though looking for something. Bilbo, perhaps?

The bird croaked for the third time, and Bilbo mimicked it, the sound odd in his throat. He flinched back when the thing turned fast to stare at him. It let out another sound; a rough gravelly gargling. Bilbo tried to repeat that as well, but it must not have been good enough because the bird spoke again in a lilting musical jumble of sounds that Bilbo did much better with. And then it said, "Who is there? Show yourself!"

Bilbo giggled. Words! Words he could understand! He repeated them back, liking the feel of these better on his tongue.

"I do not answer to invaders and thieves, and this is the only thing you could be, taking advantage of a dwarven tragedy. Answer me! Who are you? How did you get past the wyrm?"

"Worm?" There were no worms here. The garden might have them. And if it did, they weren't terribly hard to get past. Bilbo stepped out from behind the archway and walked on unsteady feet toward the black bird. It was hard to hold onto his apple and the cloth. After a few steps, he tripped on the too-long shift, ending up on his hands and knees with his half-eaten fruit rolling across the stone floor toward the bird.

It appeared shocked as he drew nearer, skittering back a half step when he fell, "A babe?" It tilted its large head. Bilbo did the same, bright golden curls falling over his eye. "A… shiny babe." The bird was talking again, but Bilbo was too busy trying to stand to say the words back. The bird was taller than him. And broader, with sharp-looking talons that didn't manage to frighten Bilbo so much as make him curious. Its voice softened, though it was still rougher than Bilbo's, "What is your name little one?"

Name? Name! How could he have forgotten? The music had told him his name.

"Bilbo Baggins!" he sang.

"Hello, Bilbo Baggins. I am Roäc, son of Carc, of Ravenhill." Roäc peered around the room. "What are you doing here, young Master Baggins? Where is your family?"

"Family..." Bilbo rolled the word across his tongue. He thought hard because it had not occurred to him. "No family," he decided and wandered past Roäc to the garden. He was still hungry, and his apple was all dirty. This time he pulled hard on the piece of bushy greenery on the sunny side of the garden. He knew there was something he could eat on the other end. Carrot, he thought, that sounded right.

Roäc followed and watched, "But where is your mother? Where did you come from?" Bilbo pointed at his hole. "From the earth?" Bilbo nodded just before the vegetable he was tugging on gave way and he fell back again, this time landing on much softer earth and with food to eat in his lap. "But who named you, Master Baggins?"

Bilbo beamed at Roäc, "Bilbo Baggins!" he sang again. It was nothing like the music he remembered, but it sounded much better in his voice than it would have in Roäc's. Roäc's was too harsh to do anything but croak.

The raven let out a gravelly sigh, "It is not safe for you here, Bilbo Baggins. An evil wyrm sleeps inside this mountain."

"My mountain," Bilbo told him loudly, nibbling on his carrot. It was very good. Better than the apple, in his opinion.

Another sigh, "I'm surprised the fire-drake hasn't woken already with the racket you make." Roäc was silent for a long time while Bilbo ate and stared. Roäc was very nice to look at; his feathers gleamed in the sunlight. Bilbo stretched out a pudgy hand to touch. Roäc shook himself slightly under Bilbo's fingers but allowed the petting. "I suppose until the dragon eats you or whoever left you here comes back, you should stay put. The Queen's rooms are largely untouched. I will catch you something better to eat than leafy things." Bilbo hummed and manoeuvred closer until Roäc's warmth covered his back. He could feel the next sigh expanding Roäc's feathery body and ruffling the hair atop Bilbo's head. "For now, you should rest."

Roäc did catch him something else when the sun was sinking behind the horizon, and Bilbo struggled to climb up into the armchair by the big fireplace that faced the garden. It was a rabbit that didn't taste nearly as good as the carrot had.

/^\

Over the years, Roäc and the other ravens taught him to read the books in his library – the room behind the mosaic in his bathroom.

The library walls were lined with bookshelves reaching up to the ceiling. Books and scrolls filled every inch of space in them, some well-read and others looking as if they'd never been opened. Chairs and low side tables filled the centre of the room, but Bilbo rarely used them. He preferred his chair by the fire, facing his garden.

There was an ornate door set into the wall across from the bathroom. It had carvings filled with silver, a matching handle, and a heavy locking mechanism that looked iron made. But Bilbo did not bother with that door very much as it only made him wish for things he couldn't have. Once Bilbo had grown tall enough to reach the handle, he'd opened it to find the hallway outside was blocked by debris. It swung inwards, but Bilbo could only take one step over the threshold before his path was cut off by the cracked and broken stone that blocked the passageway. When he tried to move a stone, the entire thing had shifted and groaned dangerously. Roäc made him promise not to try again. Who but the wyrm knew what was on the other side? What could be on the other side but the wyrm?

Most of the books in his library were meant to teach, though all the books by the basin in his bedroom were full of recipes and dishes far too complicated for him to try until he was older (or taller). There were those on mining and swordplay and poisonous plants. More on sewing and weaving and dancing. Some were on customs of elves and men, but none on the dwarves much to Bilbo's disappointment. Still, others were filled with directions on how to properly raise anything from a cow to a cat. There were also scrolls of maps, of Erebor, and the land surrounding it. There were scrolls on the genealogy of various royal families. The elves of Greenwood – now Mirkwood, the ravens said – and Rivendell, the men of Dale, and the dwarves of Erebor and the Iron Hills.

But Bilbo's favourite were the ones on the wall by the ornate door. They were adventure stories, and Bilbo preferred those at bedtime, turning the pages until he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer.

The ravens also taught him to build traps that they could carry beyond his garden and the wasteland they called the Desolation of Smaug. They taught him about Erebor and its fall and Smaug too. They warned him every day that the dragon would wake up and eat him.

Roäc would always finish talk of the dragon with, "But perhaps he'd let you live, Mizimith, since you are not even a mouthful yet and the beast likes to collect shiny things."

Bilbo would grumble and give him the rest of the roasted rabbit or pheasant or whatever they had brought back in the traps that day.

Sometimes, when Bilbo got very emotional – angry, happy, or sad, it did not matter – he would shine. His skin and his hair and his eyes would glow as though reflecting some hidden inner luminescence. The ravens called him Mizimith. Even when he reached his twentieth year and could no longer be considered a _young_ gem.

"But you shine like the treasures of the dwarves," Roäc would tell him, "And you are so very young compared me."

"Dirt is young compared to you," Dirac, another younger raven would reply, before fleeing Roäc's glare with a croaking laugh.

"Do dwarves shine too?" Bilbo had asked in the autumn of his eleventh year.

Roäc regarded him solemnly, "No."

Bilbo was quiet for a long time before he gathered the courage to ask, "If I am not a dwarf, an elf, or a man... what am I, Roäc?"

"I do not know, Mizimith. You are closer to the dwarves in size, though they still are taller than you." Bilbo rolled his eyes. He didn't want to be tall, so far from the earth. But he didn't interrupt Roäc to tell him so, "You do not have a beard, and your ears are like that of an elf, yet you seem to age like a man. And still stranger, you glow like the most precious of gems. I do not know what to make of you, Bilbo Baggins."

It was not the answer Bilbo wanted, but the only one he was ever given.

/^\

He discovered, one day, a passage that led straight from his library to the bedroom. He only found it because he'd been climbing a bookcase near the corner and had grabbed one of the bookends for balance. It snicked forward, nearly sending him tumbling to the floor, and a section of the bookcase swung open to reveal his bedroom. When he stepped through it, he came out right between the fireplace and the wardrobe. The experience made him curious despite Roäc's insistence that he, _please_ be careful, lest the next discovery end with a broken bone. He spent much of the following week checking every nook and cranny for more passageways. Perhaps there was one that led to more rooms, or even into the hallway!

He only ever found one other, just to the left of the shelves and basin. Bilbo might not have found it if he hadn't been looking – or more accurately feeling – for it. The grooves of the doorway were just barely noticeable under his fingertips. The keyhole was much more apparent. A keyhole that Bilbo had no key to. And no books on lockpicking. When he asked Roäc what was on the other side, the old raven said, "The king's rooms, but you would not want to visit them. They were empty long before Smaug came. King Thror spent most of his time in the treasury or the throne room."

"Why the treasury?" Bilbo had asked, now nearly seventeen and far too curious for his own good, or so Roäc said. 

"They didn't tell us, or at least, my father never told me. Dwarf business, you see, has a habit of staying dwarf business even from ravens." Bilbo rolled his eyes in frustration – another thing Roäc said he did all too often nowadays.

Dirac brought him a sword in the spring of his twenty-fifth year, a well-made one with a single gem in the hilt. Bilbo wasn't sure how much the ravens knew about swordplay, but Roäc corrected him often when he and Dirac made him practice.

Dirac was possibly the only raven Bilbo had ever persuaded to bring him news beyond hunting and weather, the kind Roäc called gossip. It wasn't much of a persuasion; she enjoyed learning about these things as much as he did. While she wasn't nearly as old as Roäc, she had at least a century on many of the younger ravens. Dirac was usually the one to stay with him at night. They would stay up far past when he should've been asleep, and Dirac would tell him stories about the men or the elves. About how a young bargeman tried to give a woman flowers, but she was allergic and sneezed them into oblivion even as she tried to thank him. About how the elf prince nearly shot down a thrush while practising archery and was forced inside his elf kingdom by the resulting swarm.

The ravens would sometimes bring him items from Esgaroth that Bilbo could not grow or get himself. Things like flour, milk, or scraps of fabric that Bilbo could make his clothes from. They only took a little bit at a time and only from those like the Master of Esgaroth who, Dirac told him, was a horrible man who had more things and money than he used and who refused to help his people.

But on that day in his twenty-fifth year, she brought him a sword with the help of three other ravens. It was a real one the ravens had taken from the guard's post near Ravenhill. "You should learn to defend yourself as all proper dwarves do," Dirac said. "You are getting bigger, and the beast might actually want to eat you."

Bilbo thought it was silly to learn the sword. He could not leave the rooms - save jumping off the side of the mountain. And why would he leave anyway? He had his garden, his kitchen, and his library. And he had the ravens for company. The sleeping dragon had not awoken in the twenty-five years he had lived, why would it wake up now?

"I am not a dwarf," he reminded Dirac sourly. "I have no beard."

"But you are not an elf," she said, giving the raven's coughing version of a laugh. "At least, there is that."

The old ravens did not like the elves. The nestlings, or those too young to have witnessed Smaug's attack, did not hate them as much. But even Dirac with her curiosity so like Bilbo's held a certain amount of disdain for them. Bilbo had no thoughts on any of the races. He'd like to meet an elf one day. Or a man. Or a dwarf. The ravens made sure if he ever did, he would be able to speak to them in their tongue. The ravens had a knack for languages, and Bilbo could speak them all well enough, though not nearly as easily as they did. At the end of one of his lessons, Bilbo asked Roäc if the dwarves would ever come back.

"I do not think they could stay away if they tried," he replied, a hopeful gleam in his old beady eyes. "This mountain is their home. They belong to it as it belongs to them."

"As it belongs to me?" Bilbo asked.

"Yes, Mizimith," Roäc could not smile, but Bilbo heard it in his voice anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally, Erebor is a humid continental climate. Meaning that it has cold winters and mild summers with wet transitional periods and that the mountain is snowcapped even in the spring. I'm invoking the Writer's Right to Fuck Things Up and declaring that Smaug was keeping our little hobbit warm until he's slain by Bard. And then the mountain is gonna get snow again but only above the gates (right about where Bilbo's rooms are). Our little hobbit is gonna feel true winter for the first time in his hobbity life! In like four chapters lol.
> 
> Also, I'm gonna have to warn you guys that I may edit this chapter later on... I'm not TOTALLY happy with it. But it's done and I promised you all a chapter longer than 1k and by damn if I'm not gonna give it to you!
> 
> Leave a comment on your way out and may you find many happy OTPs and AUs!


	3. In Which Dwarves Poke a Sleeping Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dragon wakes up, and it isn't even Bilbo's fault.

_“Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus” – the motto of Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

He was barely a month into his fifty-first year when the dragon awoke.

Bilbo did not jerk from sleep as much as he was launched into consciousness, heart beating so hard he thought it would explode from his chest to run away. A roar like he had never before heard from beast nor bird tore through his mountain, shaking the kettles and pans in his fireplace so that they rattled and fell.

"Smaug," he whispered. Roäc had been right. The dragon had awoken, and it was going to eat him.

There was always a raven in his rooms. Usually, it was Dirac, but she’d been gone for weeks with no warning or explanation. Tonight, it had been Käric, a young bird, younger even than Bilbo. Käric was already up and flying out to the garden. Bilbo jumped down and followed on shaky legs. He grabbed up his sword on the way, his light making the blade shine. The sword would do next to nothing against the drake, Bilbo knew, but he'd rather be eaten like a hero from one of his books than some cowering faintheart. His nightshirt was the same shift he had first worn a half a century ago, even now only reaching mid-thigh. Not exactly something he wished to face a dragon in, but perhaps the sight of his naked legs would distract the beast enough he could run. Not that he had anywhere to run to…

Just as Bilbo reached his garden the whole mountain shook and another heart-stopping roar echoed into the night. He stumbled and nearly went down to his knees in the herbs. Rocks tumbled down to the Desolation below missing Bilbo’s oasis by mere armlengths.

"Tarc says Smaug flies to Esgaroth," Käric announced when Bilbo joined him by the apple tree. There were ravens circling the mountain, flying from east to west. Esgaroth wasn’t visible from his garden, being directly south. Far off to the left, he could see a bit of the forest of Mirkwood – to the north were mountains. The maps named them the Withered Heath. To the east Bilbo could just make out the ridges of the Iron Hills.

"What woke him?" Bilbo asked. Fear contracted his chest and made it hard for him to speak. His words came out breathless and quiet.

"Dwarves," Roäc cried as he landed with a beat of his wings on the apple tree's lowest bough. He spoke in the tongue of the ravens and there was joy as well as fear in his voice, "Dwarves have returned to the Lonely Mountain."

Dwarves!? When had the dwarves returned? If they had reached the mountain that night, then they must have been travelling for weeks if not months. Were they from the Iron Hills? Why hadn’t Roäc said anything? Was that where Dirac had gone? Bilbo pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind; this was no time to stand there wringing his hands.

"Roäc, what of the men?" Bilbo said in the same language, "What will become of Esgaroth?"

Roäc shook himself as though getting rid of water, "Unless the beast is slain, Esgaroth will perish. Already Lake Town burns."

A deep sense of horror welled up in Bilbo's gut and his skin began to brighten even more with the agitation. "We have to do something! We can't let them die!"

"What can we do?" Käric said, ruffling his feathers in distress, "Our talons will do nothing against Smaug’s hide."

Bilbo thought fast, the longer he deliberated the more lives were lost in Lake-town. He looked to Roäc "You told me when Smaug destroyed Dale an archer hit him." Roäc nodded but Bilbo didn't stop. "His belly, you said, Smaug's underbelly was struck."

"By an arrow forged by King Thrór himself and fired by Lord Girion of Dale, a master of the bow," Roäc countered solemnly, "Such combinations of weapons and bowmen are in short supply among the men of Esgaroth."

"But it's the only knowledge we have!" Bilbo's light flared, making Käric flinch, "We must tell them. Roäc, please! Find the leader of Esgaroth. Tell them what we know."

Roäc’s silence was interrupted by a third roar, an explosion, and the distant sound of screams.

"Very well. Käric, fly fast."

Käric was up in the air before Roäc was finished.

"Thank you, Roäc," Bilbo said, leaning hard against the apple tree.

"You have a soft heart, Mizimith." Roäc flew down to land on the ground. Bilbo sat with his back to the tree to be closer to him. Roäc shifted to warm his side and ward off the autumn chill, somehow colder than usual, "It is both a good and bad thing."

They waited a long time for Käric to return. Ravens came and went, telling them of the women and children who had escaped into the ruins of Dale, of the death of the Master of Esgaroth, and the archers that stayed and fought on. After nearly an hour, just as the sun was peaking over the Iron Hills, another roar rent the night. Bilbo leapt up, jostling Roäc and probably blinding him as well with his nervous glow. Minutes later, Käric appeared around the side of the mountain.

"Käric! What happened? We heard a roar. Is Smaug coming back? Is Esgaroth gone?" Bilbo rushed to the western edge of his garden, nearly trampling the carrots.

"Smaug is slain." Käric landed gracelessly on the ground, shivering, "Bard the Bowman, struck him with a dwarf forged arrow over his heart. Esgaroth is destroyed but many have survived. They are moving remaining survivors to the ruins.”

"Smaug is dead?" Relief made Bilbo’s skin radiant. "Thank Yavanna." Käric flew away to rest at Ravenhill and Bilbo turned to Roäc, "What do we do now?"

"I am going to find the dwarves that have entered the mountain." Roäc rustled his feathers as though to take flight but stopped when Bilbo sank to the ground, "Mizimith?"

Dwarves. Dwarves had returned to Erebor. What if they made him leave? What would he do outside the mountain? His books were here. His clothes and garden. His flowers. Where would he go? This was his home! "Will they make me leave, Roäc?" Anger and indignation joined the fear, turned his shine painful in its brightness. “They cannot force me from my home, Roäc, I won’t let them."

"They will not make you leave, Mizimith, there is no need to worry. This is your home as well as theirs," Roäc spread his wings to take flight but paused, "And... you are precious to the ravens of Ravenhill. You have our protection." With that, he took off to the west and vanished behind the mountainside, leaving Bilbo’s anger to awkwardly peter out.

He stared after the bird, his glow fading into something softer with Roäc’s uncharacteristic declaration. Bilbo was suddenly exhausted. He'd never shone so much in one day. And it was only sunrise! He retreated inside to get dressed. Who knew when dwarves would be knocking on his door?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I accept your hatred for this super short chapter but I've just moved to Scotland and its my Gran's birthday so I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time to edit and organize. Next chapter will be longer and then we'll finally meet our dwarves!!! :D
> 
> Also! Here's a funny story, as I was writing, I was trying to figure out how to tell the difference between Fíli and Kíli and my sister points out "Fili is first" so, of course, my brain jumps to
> 
> Fíli is the first  
Kíli is the best  
Smaug is the one with the golden chest
> 
> And I leave you with that little gem
> 
> Leave a comment on your way out and may you find many happy OTPs and AUs!


	4. Whispers in the Halls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo prepares for his guests' arrival and Dirac brings worrying news.

_“I can hear your whisper and distant mutter. I can smell your damp on the breeze and in the sky, I see the halo of your violence. Storm, I know you are coming.” – Robert Fanney_

It turned out dwarves took a long time to knock if they knocked at all. It was two full days and morning after Smaug's death when Bilbo was having his third helping of breakfast in the library as he read over the books on etiquette that muffled voices could be heard outside in the obstructed hallway. Bilbo hurried to the door and pulled it open. The distant sound of conversation became clear enough to understand.

The voices were speaking in Khuzdul! It could only be dwarves on the other side.

"Are you remembering those directions right, Fíli?"

A loud put-upon sigh, "Amad said the royal private rooms were on the north side of the mountain or doesn't your stone-sense work?"

"Oi! I'm not the one getting us lost!"

"At least we didn't get Irak’Adad’s sense of direction – I think it's just up ahead. This hallway’s all blocked off. Here, help me start making a path."

The voices stopped just down the hall. There were grunts and heavy clatters like rock on stone.

"Hello?" Bilbo said in Khuzdul, "Can you hear me?"

The grunting and clattering stopped.

"Did you hear that?" One of the voices asked.

"Hello?" He called again.

"Mahal's balls – hello? Who is that?"

Bilbo's heart leapt, dwarves! Actual dwarves! Talking to him! The rubble in the doorway lit up with Bilbo's reflected excitement. "Bilbo Baggins! Who is that?"

Mutters that Bilbo's ears couldn't pick up.

"What are you doing in our mountain Mister Boggins?" The rougher of the two voices asked.

"Your mountain? I'll have you know I live here, and this is my mountain!” Bilbo corrected crossly before backtracking, “And it's _Baggins_.”

Everything was quiet on the other side of the rubble. Bilbo was almost sorry for his outburst. Were they even still there? He was about to ask that very question aloud when one of them – the softer, Kíli, Bilbo thought – spoke, "Are you a ghost?"

There was a thump and a whispered, "Ow!"

"What if he doesn't know he's a ghost, elf-brain?"

Bilbo scoffed, "I'm not a ghost. I'm... Well, I'm not a ghost."

"Really?" Kíli asked, "You don't sound too sure about that – _ow_, Fee stop it!"

"I'm not a ghost!" Yavanna's sweet voice, were all dwarves this irritating? "If you would move all this rubble, you would see that."

"Well, it's going to take a while to do that, some of the columns have fallen in." Fíli explained, "We'll have to get help if we want it done faster."

"They’re never going to believe this," Bilbo heard Kíli say before their footsteps faded.

He settled in one of the library chairs to wait.

Fíli and Kíli came back less than a half-hour later with a much deeper voice muttering curses in accented Khuzdul. Bilbo jumped to his feet to stand uselessly in the blocked doorway and found himself turning red at one suggestion involving an elf and a particularly amorous boar.

"Dwalin, we're not kidding there's someone back there!" Fíli was saying.

"A ghost!" Kíli agreed.

_Not this again_. Bilbo groaned, "I am not a ghost!"

The cursing stopped, "Who's there?" A gruff voice, much older than the first two, asked through the stone.

Bilbo sighed, he was going to be doing this all day at this rate. "Bilbo Baggins, I live here, and who are you?"

"Live here?” The voice was abrasive and suspicious. Bilbo instantly liked it far less than Fíli’s and Kíli’s playful tones. “Didn't think anyone got left behind ‘sides the dead.”

“Well, I–”

“How old are you, Mister Baggins? Have you been here since the fall of Erebor?"

Bilbo frowned, he wanted to get some answers too, instead, he was being ignored! "Don't you know how rude it is to ask a person their age?" He would know. He'd read all of the etiquette books more than thrice and skimmed most of them that morning. One happened to be the only book on elves in the whole library. Some of the rules were rather ridiculous and certainly outdated, like changing conversation partners with every course of a meal. Imagine, interrupting a perfectly good conversation simply because the food was ready. "Would you be more or less inclined to help me if I told you I was fifteen or fifty? Now," Bilbo continued, "I'll ask again, who are you?"

Giggling could be heard down the hall. The newest dwarf huffed, obviously annoyed, "I am Dwalin son of Fundin. How did you get stuck in the royal wing?"

"I was... well, I was born here."

Silence met his words.

"Do we have an uncle we don't know about?" Kíli wondered.

"Amad would have said something wouldn't she?" Fíli asked.

They were both shushed by Dwalin's words, "Bor-born!? By Mahal. Lads, go get your uncle, tell him he can look for the bleedin' Arkenstone after we get Mister Baggins out of his mother's rooms-"

"No!" Fíli and Kíli interrupted as one and began to talk over each other.

"We can do this without Irak’Adad, can't we Dwalin?"

"He doesn't need to be bothered-"

"He'll only be mad-"

"It's only a _little_ cave in-"

"Enough!" Bilbo blinked at the command in Dwalin's voice, he'd thought Roäc was intimidating when he was angry. The old raven had nothing on this dwarf, "What do you two know that I do not?"

Silence.

Then one of them – Fíli, Bilbo thought – began hesitantly, "We...

"Well, Amad said..." His brother said over him.

"She saw where... we might-"

"Possibly!"

"-know where the Arkenstone is..."

"Sorry to interrupt," Bilbo called, not sorry at all and very much impatient, "But is there any way to discuss this stone's whereabouts _after_ you get me out?"

All three of them ignored him and Bilbo cursed his every wish over the years to meet a dwarf. He hadn't even met one face to face yet and they were already proving more aggravating than they were worth.

"You know where the Heart of the Mountain is?" Dwalin demanded, voice rising to a thunderous shout with every word. "The King’s Jewel! Your uncle's birthright!? And you've kept it from him!?"

"You don't understand, Dwalin, Amad made us promise not to tell," Fíli explained, tone hard with resolve.

Kíli joined in, "She told us Ugmil ’amad hid the stone in her rooms. She said not to let Irak’Adad have it until she was here."

"You know what that stone does, Dwalin. And… as much as we hate to admit it, the line of Durin is particularly susceptible to dragon-sickness." Fíli’s voice grew quiet, “Uncle’s been different the past few days in the mountain. We’ve – we’ve all been different. Dwalin… I don’t think the Arkenstone should be found yet.”

Bilbo listened to all this intently, thinking through the books he'd read, the stories he'd been told. Dragon-sickness? Arkenstone? He'd never heard of such things. The ravens had never spoken of them. Neither were mentioned in any of the books in his library. He certainly had never felt sick and he'd lived next to a slumbering dragon his whole life. Perhaps it was a dwarf affliction?

Dwalin was speaking again, "When did you two become so wise, then?"

"Oh, I don't know," Fíli drawled.

"Somewhere between nearly being dinner for trolls and prisoners of elves?" Kíli chuckled. Bilbo's eyes widened, his irritation falling away. Elves? Trolls!? He must get them to tell him about their journey. What a story that would be!

"I'd say you'll both make great dwarves," Dwalin said gruffly.

Bilbo waited, was about to call to remind them that after fifty or so years of waiting he'd very much like to explore the rest of the mountain, when Dwalin yelled out, "Wait there, Mister Baggins, shouldn't take us more than some four or five hours to clear a path."

Their voices changed to grunts and the sound of stones shifting again. Bilbo stepped back from the doorway, excitement making his toes curl and his skin shine.

He wrung his hands. He couldn't just stand there like a fool waiting to be rescued - if one could be rescued from their own home - he should do something! "Oh dear," he mumbled, glancing about the library and realizing he hadn't cleaned since Smaug had awoken days before. Books were pulled from the shelves and stacked haphazardly on chairs and tables. And he was still in his nightgown! He couldn't take visitors like this. His first visitors! (The ravens didn't count, being family of course.)

Bilbo rushed around, getting dressed in one of the better waistcoat and trousers he'd made, making his bed and putting the pile of books by the armchair away. He did the dishes and cleaned the ashes from the fire. He was just taking a break to have a snack when a terrible thought occurred to him.

He ran into the library to open the door again, so he could ask, "Pardon me, but have you had anything to eat? Only I was going to make myself some lunch, and I realized – well, you’ve been travelling, haven’t you? And–"

"Eat?"

"Has he got food in there?"

"Of course, he's got food, he's been livin' in there for ages, Fee."

"How d'you know it's been ages?"

“Well, he wasn’t born _yesterday_.”

Dwalin answered over Fíli and Kíli's chatter, "No. We've had nothing but broth and stew on our journey."

"And cram."

"Cram's not food. It’s more of a chewing exercise."

"At least it's not lembas bread."

"I'd take lembas bread over cram any day."

"Quiet!" Dwalin cut them off.

Bilbo wrung his hands. They sounded starved! He thought fast, "I'm afraid I don't have much, vegetables and fruit mostly but I can ask the ravens to bring in my traps."

"Ravens?"

"Traps?"

"That... would be helpful," Dwalin stuttered out, "Thank you."

"Did Dwalin just say thank you?"

"To a ghost no less."

"Back to work, both of you!"

"How much longer do you think it'll be?" Bilbo asked them, calculating preparation and cook times in his head.

"Another two hours at most, Mister Boggins," Fíli responded cheerfully.

Bilbo nodded to no one in particular, that should be just enough time if the ravens were quick about it. Closing the door, he pulled out one of the more used cookbooks he had. Pheasant and potatoes. And perhaps some boiled carrots. That should be a nice change for them. He wouldn't make any bread, as his wheat wasn't meant to be harvested until spring, and he only had so much flour left to last him. And they'd said they were sick of bread anyway. Bilbo was curious to know what lembas bread was - there wasn't a recipe in his collection for that. He went out to the garden to pull up the sweet potatoes and carrots and wait for a raven to fly past.

Roäc hadn't been back since they were told of Smaug's demise and no ravens had joined him since Käric had left him after dinner yesterday. Dirac hadn’t been to visit in… nearly a week before that, actually. Bilbo wondered where she’d been, and if she’d known the dwarves were coming. He had the sneaking suspicion she had. How could she not have, flying ‘round Mirkwood and Esgaroth for gossip as she did? But if she had known, why not come to Bilbo?

As though his thoughts had conjured her, Dirac came around from the east just as Bilbo was finishing collecting the greens to take them inside.

"Dirac! Where have you been? So much has happened! Do you have any news about the dwarves?" He followed the raven as she winged in to land on his headboard, talons digging into the wood. It had been odd to see neither Dirac nor Roäc every day. But, he supposed, dwarves returning to Erebor and a slain dragon were just a tad more pressing than updating Bilbo, who could do nothing from his rooms.

"There are thirteen dwarves in the mountain,” Dirac divulged warily. “One of them is Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thráin, son of Thror, King Under the Mountain."

Bilbo nearly dropped the basket, his fingers were so shaky with excitement, "King Under the Mountain? Really?"

Dirac hopped to the end of the bed to watch Bilbo wash the vegetables. "Do you need the traps?"

"Please, pheasant or quail if you can find it, or as many rabbits as you can bring back." Bilbo offered her a few seeds he kept in a bowl by the basin. She took them eagerly, careful not to gouge his soft hands.

"I will be back." She glanced non-too subtly at the door to the hallway, "And then you will tell me why three of the thirteen are moving stones so close to your rooms."

Bilbo smiled as she flew out to the garden and off beyond the wastelands. He’d ask her about the dwarves later, tonight he was going to put it from his mind. He finished washing the potatoes and carrots then went to start a fire and set two pots to boil over it, sitting down in his armchair to peel and cut the carrots while he waited. He was halfway through the potatoes when Dirac returned with a dead pheasant dangling from her claws.

"Thank you, Dirac." She laid the dead bird on the hearth before turning curious intelligent eyes on him.

"The dwarves grow nearer."

"They do. They're... well, they said they're clearing a path so that I may get out." Bilbo glanced once at the door to the library, around the room, and back to the potatoes in his hands. Once peeled, he dumped them and the carrots into their respective pots and brought out the knives he used to skin and clean whatever game the ravens brought to him. He brought the carcass outside into the garden, Dirac following in his wake.

"Do you want to get out?" Dirac inquired.

Bilbo did not answer right away, focusing on not getting any blood or feathers on his waistcoat and trousers. "I want to see the rest of the mountain," he began, "Maybe even outside it, but I don't want to leave forever." Bilbo peeked at her, "I don't want to leave you and Roäc and the others. You are my family, and this is my home." He’d thought this same thing often since Roäc had left. He’d even fight the dwarves if they tried to force him out. As much good as that would do him.

Dirac sidled up close, and rested her sharp beak on his shoulder, "We would not let that happen, Mizimith. Roäc is far too fond of your shine to let you go."

Bilbo laughed, "Roäc said something like that, though he didn't mention my shine."

"That is because he is a silly male and an emotional old bird," Dirac scoffed before settling farther away so none of the blood got on her feathers, "I saw elves riding from Mirkwood this morning bringing a wizard with them. "They call him Mithrandir." What an elvish name for a wizard, Bilbo thought. “The elven host has reached what is left of Lake-town."

“They’re heading here? Whatever for?"

Dirac did not hide her contempt, "Riches, of course, now that the beast is slain for them, it seems they have come to claim some of Erebor's treasure."

"I wonder if I'll get to meet one," Bilbo pondered aloud, as he climbed to his feet, hands held away from his clean clothes and bloody pheasant gripped tightly. "My Sindarin is much better than my Khuzdul."

"Even your Raven-speech is better than your Khuzdul," Dirac pointed out. Bilbo flicked some blood at her in retaliation. She shrieked in outrage.

He set about cutting the good meat off the pheasant and placing it into a pan over the fire. The potatoes were done, and he took that pot off so he could mash them up properly once he was finished with the pheasant meat. The carrots needed at least another few minutes. "What of Roäc? I haven't heard from him since the dragon fell."

"Thorin Oakenshield has sent him to the Iron Hills for Lord Dáin Ironfoot. A battle is coming, and the dwarves need assistance." She spoke so casually Bilbo might have missed it if he hadn’t been paying close attention.

As it was, he nearly dropped the carcass he was holding, forgetting about it entirely to stare at Dirac, skin beginning to lighten in agitation and fear, "A battle? Dirac, why didn’t you tell me!? How soon? Do the elves and men know?"

"Why would I worry you unduly when there is nothing you could have done but fret for days?” Bilbo glared at Dirac. It was probably that same logic that kept her from telling him dwarves were on their way to the mountain. She gave her feathers a general shiver in what Bilbo thought of like a shrug, “Don’t look at me like that, Mizimith. As for the elves and men, I’m not sure if they know. It is possible this is another reason the King of the Woodland Realm rides to Erebor."

"How soon, Dirac?” Bilbo asked again. “And who are the combatants?" He carried the rest of the pheasant out to his garden and threw it over the side, as far as he could. Usually, he'd have the ravens take it home or far away, so scavengers wouldn't come near his garden, but obviously, there were more important things to be taken care of.

"There's an army of orcs and goblins heading this way, set to arrive in three weeks," Dirac said somberly.

Bilbo's blood froze in his veins, and his skin brightened further, "Orcs? Goblins? But why? What are they fighting for? Erebor?" As much as he had wanted to meet a dwarf or an elf or even a man, Bilbo had never been curious enough to wish an orc or goblin upon his mountain, or his ravens. Roäc had told him gruesome stories of dwarvish battles against the orcs, elves gone awfully, horribly wrong through torture. Bilbo’s body gave an involuntary shudder, making the walls shiver with gold luminescence.

"Why...? For jewels and gold Mizimith! There is enough treasure in this mountain to make even the most peaceful spirit take up arms."

"That's horrible,” Bilbo mashed the potatoes with a little more force than he would normally use on the old ceramic bowl. “Death and war for a pile of shiny rocks.”

"Not all beings can resist a mountain of gold, Mizimith," Dirac chided and almost to herself added, “You are the exception.”

"Will this Dáin make it in time? How fast can an army of dwarves travel?" Bilbo put the mashed and salted potatoes next to the fireplace and pulled the carrots out of it. "How far is the Iron Hills?"

"You ask too many questions for a shiny little thing," Dirac grumbled. It was something she'd said for as long as he could remember, a teasing remark that helped soothe him now. He took measured breaths to calm himself and the fearful gleam of his skin faded away. "The Iron Hills are three days flight for an old raven like Roäc. As for the dwarves... I cannot say if they will make it in time. All we can do is hope."

"I don't like it." His mountain threatened by orcs and goblins and elves and men. It almost made him wish the dwarves had never come back. Almost. He was a selfishly curious creature at heart.

"Nor do I, Mizimith. But you should hurry with your dinner. I think the dwarves are almost upon you."

It was true, as Bilbo drained the carrots and took the fat juices from the pheasant for a gravy, he could hear mutters and curses even from the bedroom.

"Will you stay and eat, Dirac?" he asked, wiping his hands on one of the rags he had hung by the fireplace.

She regarded him with an almost pitying tilt to her beak, "Mizimith, you are not to be left alone with strange dwarves in the mountain, especially when they are digging toward your door. Of course, I am staying."

"Right." Bilbo twisted his fingers in his lap, feeling a little bit better and glancing from carrots to potatoes to the still cooking pheasant. "I suppose there's nothing to do but wait."

Dirac shifted nervously. "Bilbo… I would ask that you do not shine in front of the dwarves."

Bilbo blinked in surprise, "Why not?" She didn’t answer, and it occurred to him, "Do you think they would hurt me because of it? Because of my light?"

"I am not sure," Dirac admitted. "Dwarves are not kind to outsiders, and at the moment they know you as nothing else. We don’t need to give them more of a reason, in any case."

"But I'm not sure I can control it, Dirac. It just... happens. I've never had to hide it before." There had been no one to hide it _from_.

"You must try, Mizimith. Just for now." Dirac urged, and Bilbo agreed though he still wasn't clear on why he should. Surely the dwarves wouldn't hurt him for something so inconsequential.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, goblins and orcs are technically the same things according to book canon. I did not know this. Still, I've decided to hell with continuity and I'm picking and choosing the pieces of canon I want to keep between the books and movies. There will be no order here! Only madness!
> 
> In other news, just finished my first week of school! It's been crazy trying to figure out buses. Also, I tried to go buy pants and the lady at the counter gave me a weird look and that's when I realized pants were underpants and I was supposed to say trousers.
> 
> Leave a comment on your way out and may you find many happy OTPs and AUs!


	5. Supper and Strategy with Dwarves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo's first experience with dwarves isn't turning out as well as he thought it would.

_"When your past shows up to haunt you, make sure it comes after supper, so it doesn't ruin your whole day." – Jay Wickre_

He was checking the pheasant for the third time when there came a knock at the door.

Bilbo nearly hit his head on the fireplace as he scrambled out from the hearth. He stopped in the doorway of his library, staring at the door he hadn’t touched in years besides that morning. His feet wouldn't move. His hands trembled, and his light shone gold into every corner with his nerves, battling the firelight for dominance. Dwarves were just on the other side of his door. Dwarves! Hadn't he waited years and years to meet a dwarf? To meet anyone besides his ravens? And now he was just standing there like a fool!

"Mizimith, aren't you going to open the door?" Dirac asked playfully.

"Yes," Bilbo muttered. He cleared his throat. "Just a moment!" He stood in front of the door, gathering himself. Once he was calm, his light dimmed, and his skin was simply skin again.

Bilbo pulled open the door to reveal three dwarves, all of whom were a good head taller than he. Each was sporting a beard, though the bald, tattooed one in back had one much thicker and longer than the two in front. They looked younger and were – Bilbo guessed – Fíli and Kíli, which made the rather frightening looking dwarf in the back Dwalin.

He was just wondering exactly how young the two closest dwarves were when the dark-haired one declared, "Well, Fíli, he's certainly not our uncle, he's too young! He hasn't even got a beard yet!" He leaned in to peer at Bilbo. He had the shortest beard of the lot, just stubble really.

Fíli tugged on one of the braids woven into his blonde beard. It was slightly longer than the brunette’s but certainly not as long or thick as the dwarf behind him, "He could be a mutant dwarf, maybe the dragon's magic got rid of his beard.”

The other dwarf who must be Kíli, leered at Bilbo, “He’s right pretty though, isn’t he? Look how his hair shines–" He cut off when Dwalin whapped both of them on the back of the head just as Bilbo lifted a hand to cover his hair, worried that it really was shining.

It was then that Bilbo remembered his manners, "Bilbo Baggins," he said, proudly noting the deceptive steadiness in his voice, "At your service."

"Dwalin." Grunted the tattooed dwarf, eyes narrowing on Bilbo's face and hair. His nerves forced his heart a little faster. “At yours,” he rumbled at last.

"Kíli!" The blonde dwarf grinned.

"And Fíli!" The second finished before both of them swept into two neat bows and said together, "At your service!"

They were very... odd, Bilbo thought, for dwarves, much too mischievous for what he’d expected. Dwalin was how he imagined them - stony and silent and intimidating. He realized he was standing in the doorway, staring at them and so stepped back, waving them in, “Come in! Come in. You must be exhausted.”

“Please, wipe your…” At that moment, Bilbo looked down, and his words choked off in horror and disgust. Their feet were grotesque! Bilbo wasn’t sure if those large, leathery, _toe-less_ things were feet at all. Where was the skin!? Where was the _hair_!? “…feet,” he finished weakly.

The dwarves paid no mind to him. They bustled by to inspect his library and then the bedroom. Suddenly recalling Dirac perched on his bed, Bilbo followed to introduce them. He scolded himself for staring and cleared his throat, "This is Dirac of Ravenhill."

All three dwarves bowed to her and Bilbo caught amusement in her tone as she said, "Behold, Dwalin, son of Fundin, and Princes Fíli and Kíli sons of Dís. I welcome you back home." Fíli and Kíli seemed surprised but pleased to be recognized.

Brothers, then? And princes too? How were they related to Thorin Oakenshield? His sons perhaps? And just how many royals were running around the mountain?

Dwalin interrupted Bilbo's pondering, "Is that supper?"

Bilbo beamed, feet (or hideous disfigurement thereof) and royalty were forgotten in the face of _real_ guests to feed. Who knew he'd ever have guests! Besides the ravens, of course. Dirac shot him a look that Bilbo interpreted as an order to limit his excitement lest his glowing give him away. "It is!" he said, unable to keep the smile off his face even as he beat his enthusiasm into submission. "One moment. Please sit," he gestured to the armchairs and couch. He set about gathering plates from the shelves on the other side of the room and doling food onto each, listening intently to the muttering going on behind him.

"This room is bigger than Amad's in Ered Luin!"

"How long has he lived here do you think?"

"Years at least, he said he was born here didn’t he - is that the garden?"

"Here you are," he said loudly, cutting off their whispered words. When he faced them, he found Dwalin in the chair facing away from the garden, and the two brothers settled on the settee. He handed the two young dwarves – Princes? Actual princes?! – their plates first before giving Dwalin his own. He set a bowl of meat on the arm of his favourite chair and settled down himself. Dirac flew to his side once he was comfortable.

"Much obliged," Dwalin grumbled, tucking in almost immediately.

Bilbo watched in fascination as the three dwarves ate like they were starved. He offered seconds of everything and took thirds himself. He usually made enough to have four helpings of dinner, and it seemed dwarves could put nearly as much food away as he did. Bilbo, of course, finished what they didn't. It wouldn't do to waste anything.

"So, Mister Boggins, how did you come to be in Ugmil ’amad's rooms?" Fíli leaned forward over his empty plate.

"And how come you haven't been eaten by a dragon?" Kíli added.

Dwalin watched on silently, narrowing his eyes when Bilbo looked to him for a third question. None came.

"I was born here. Out in the garden to be specific. I came from… well, I don't know my parentage, but the ravens raised me." Dirac pressed a little more solidly against his arm. "And the dragon never bothered me. You know, I think he might be the reason I never ran out of hot water." Fíli and Kíli's eyes widened.

"You don't look like a dwarf." Dwalin abruptly put in.

"Well, that's a relief," Bilbo snapped, "Since I am not a dwarf."

Fíli and Kíli's snickers turned into coughing fits the moment Dwalin turned his glare upon them, Bilbo ignored the ruckus entirely in favour of cleaning up their dishes.

"If you're not a dwarf, then what race are you?" Suspicion dripped from the dwarf's words, lighting an outrage in Bilbo that, thank Yavanna, stayed within.

This dwarf just wouldn't let it go, would he? It wasn’t as if Bilbo had been struggling with that same question for fifty years! Were all dwarves this infuriatingly stubborn?

Bilbo waved a spoon in the dwarves' direction, "I don't know. And if you won't cease with these rude questions in my own home, I'm going to ask you to leave." Exploring the mountain be damned.

“You don’t know?” Kíli repeated, incredulously.

"_Your_ own home!?" Dwalin thundered, leaping to his feet, "You listen here-"

Dirac rose to her feet as well, unfolding her wings and straightening up to her full size, croaking a warning as she did. It made Dwalin stop for a moment, long enough for Bilbo to whirl from the washbasin, years of dealing with young ravens making his words stern, "No, _you_ listen, you great stone-headed dwarf! I am Bilbo Baggins of the Lonely Mountain and Mizimith of Ravenhill! This _is_ my home, and you are a guest in it. Behave yourself or face the consequences." Fíli and Kíli stared at him, mouths agape until Bilbo spun on them as well. There were audible clicks as their jaws snapped closed. "You two," he said, collecting himself, "Would you like some apple bread pudding?"

Dirac did not settle again until both Princes had plates of bread pudding in their lap, and Bilbo had dumped some of Dwalin's share directly onto the dwarf's trousers. Accidentally of course. Petty? Definitely. Worth it though, Bilbo thought furiously. He sat next to Dirac in his armchair again.

The raven chuckled huskily, "Our Mizimith may be small and beardless, Mister Dwalin, but I would not suggest crossing him. I remember when he was ten years, no taller than the rose bushes, two feet at the most-"

"Dirac, please, not this story."

"Don't interrupt Mizimith. We've taught you better," Dirac couldn't smile like Bilbo, but he could recognize the mischievous tilt to her head.

"Yes, Mister Boggins, don't interrupt," Fíli reiterated. Kíli nodded vigorously, mouth full of pudding.

Bilbo dropped his head into his hands.

"As I was saying, barely bigger than a nestling, Mizimith requested a particular lesson of our chief, Roäc. 'Roäc,' he said 'I want to learn about elves.'" All three dwarves made identical faces of disgust that had Bilbo smiling reluctantly despite his irritation, "And Roäc answered him, 'I do not discuss the elves of Mirkwood. For good reason.' But our Mizimith kept asking, and finally, Roäc's temper got the better of him. ‘If you want to learn about the weed-eaters so badly,' he told him, 'climb down the mountainside and ask them yourself.’ This did not amuse our Mizimith as he and Roäc both knew he could do no such thing." Dirac gave a croaking laugh, "Roäc flew off in a huff, and for the next month, Mizimith would not speak nor respond to anything but Sindarin. The clever thing even enticed the thrushes to teach him foul language in both Sindarin and Raven-speech. Roäc only conceded to tell what he knew when Bilbo tied a string across the entrance to his rooms, making it impossible for any raven to pass in or out. Mizimith and I were holed up for nearly three days before Roäc gave in."

Fíli and Kíli were barely suppressing their laughter, and when Dirac stopped, they let loose with hoots and chortles. Even Dwalin's glower lessened a bit as he dabbed at his pants with the towel Kíli had handed him.

"Not to be rude, Mister Boggins, but really, how long have you been here?" Fíli leaned forward curiously, eyes wide and innocent – innocence didn't suit him, even Bilbo could see that, and he'd known the dwarf less than a day. Less than half a day, to be honest.

Bilbo levelled him with a look he used on the nestlings, but answered anyway, "Fifty-one years. My birthday was last month.”

Kíli gawked. "Fifty-one years!? You've lived with a dragon for fifty-one years!?"

"You must be very easy to get along with, Mister Baggins," Fíli said weakly, forgetting to use the wrong name, his eyes wide with shock as well. Dwalin gaped, towel hanging loose and forgotten in his hands.

Bilbo interrupted them before they could start another round of questions, "I have some questions for you, too."

The dwarves nodded understandingly, waiting for him to continue and probably still in shock. Bilbo knew precisely where to start. He wanted to ask about their journey. He wanted to know everything about everywhere that he couldn’t see from his garden. But he had to wait because there were more important things than his curiosity at stake.

Bilbo knew the dwarves were preparing for the coming battle, but Dirac had only told him that they'd sent for help from dwarves in the East. Who else were they seeking aide from? The elves and men were much closer than the Iron Hills. He needed to know that they were doing all they could to protect his home – their home. "Dirac says there's to be a battle."

A weight settled over the room. Dirac shuffled a bit closer to ward off the unnatural chill. Finally, Dwalin inclined his head, soberly, "Aye, there is. Many come for Erebor's riches. Elves and men, goblins and orcs." Fíli and Kíli shivered. Bilbo couldn't hold it against them.

"Who are our allies?"

He could see Dwalin's eye twitch at his choice of words, but the dwarf didn't comment, "We have sent for our brethren in the Iron Hills."

Bilbo waited for him to continue, and when Dwalin didn't, he baulked, "And that's it!?”

"That is all we have," Dwalin growled.

"But the goblins and orcs are working together, aren't they?" Bilbo pressed.

That threw Dwalin off for a moment, "Yes. How do you know they're working together?"

"The ravens told me," Bilbo waved the question away impatiently, "Have you tried the men? The elves?"

"Ally with elves!?" Dwalin exclaimed, face reddening behind his beard, "We can't trust those tree-shaggers! They'd slit our throats before they'd help us in battle!"

"Well, have you ever _been_ in battle with elves?" Bilbo pointed out. It should have occurred to him that dwarves might have the same complex about elves that the older Ravens did. They were probably where the ravens got it from.

Dwalin opened his mouth, shut it again. Fíli and Kíli stared on in awe.

"Dirac said it takes three days by flight to reach the Iron Hills and then they will have to assemble an army and travel back here on foot. Do you really think you have the time to be choosy about allies?" By this point, Bilbo is pacing the open space between the fireplace and his armchairs. "My goodness, if I had known dwarves were this foolhardy, I would've never wished for your return!"

"He wished for us to come back?" Fíli muttered to his brother, low enough he must have thought Bilbo couldn't hear him.

"Mister Boggins has a soft spot for dwarves," Kíli chuckled just as softly.

Bilbo ignored them entirely; there was a book somewhere on his shelves about battle tactics – multiple books as a matter of fact. While the dwarves were hardly enemies, it would be in Bilbo's favor to not let them in on the fact that his hearing was quite a bit better than theirs.

He thought fast, trying to recall those books now, "You need to contact the survivors of Esgaroth and the elves of Mirkwood. Dirac says the Elfking is on his way here anyway. You have a mountain of gold and jewels, something to offer them both,” There was a cry of shock and outrage from all three dwarves, also ignored. “And you can offer assistance in rebuilding Dale in addition to a portion of Erebor’s wealth.” Bilbo turned to the dwarves, “An alliance with Mirkwood and Dale can only help you in the long run. It's much smarter than fighting on three sides and _hoping_ for help from the east.”

“Listen here, we’re not asking those-” Dwalin began but was cut off by Kíli.

“Why not?”

Fíli and Dwalin both blinked at him. Bilbo did too, pleasantly surprised.

Kíli seemed a little taken aback at all the attention, but he continued anyway, “Why not ask the elves and men? We each get a thirteenth of Erebor’s treasure. Technically me, you,” Here he pointed to his brother, “and Uncle Thorin will leave our share in the vaults for the kingdom and royal family to use. That’s nearly a quarter of the wealth untouched.”

Oh, Bilbo thought, they were the king’s _nephews_. Were they next in line? Or were there children of Thorin Oakenshield somewhere, still too young to have made the journey to reclaim the mountain?

“Wealth we’ll need to rebuild!” Dwalin barked, face going even redder as he shot to his feet again. This time Dirac didn’t do anything beyond ruffling her feathers in agitation. Dwalin didn’t sit back down, but he didn’t continue.

Fíli eyed Kíli, “Brother, this isn’t about…?”

Kíli’s eyes widened, and he shook his head with such force Bilbo thought his neck might crack, “No, no, brother listen to Mister Baggins. If we promise to help Dale rebuild in the future, they’ll have all the reasons in the world to help us now. They’ll have a vested interest in making sure Erebor comes through this battle unscathed.”

Fíli was starting to nod, consideration in the set of his mouth, “I suppose.”

“You don’t understand!” Dwalin growled, “Even if we manage to reach a truce with the men, the elves will never help us.”

“But how do you _know_?” Bilbo asked, a sort of desperation starting to rise in him. It was only Dirac’s wing against his back that reminded him to control his emotions at all. Sweet Yavanna, but it was tiring. He took a deep breath, “Mister Dwalin, what do you have to lose that is not already being threatened?”

“In any case,” Fíli said, cutting off Dwalin’s retort, “There’s no use arguing about it amongst ourselves. It’s Uncle Thorin’s choice as king.” He’d relaxed against his brother again. Dwalin was still standing in front of the armchair, fist clenched and face blotchy with emotion.

At Fíli’s words, however, he seemed to calm, “Aye, you’re right, laddie.” Dwalin glanced out into the garden where the sunset was lighting up the already red leaves of Bilbo’s apple tree, “An’ your uncle will be looking for us soon, we should head back to the camp.” He looked to Bilbo, paused, then asked, “Are you coming, Mister Baggins?”

Bilbo didn’t let the frustration and nerves catch up to him; he got up and walked to the chest at the end of his bed. The clothes inside were for a Dwarrowdam, but, near the bottom, there was a burgundy travelling coat. It was a little dusty and tad long but near enough to his size. He wasn't sure if the rest of the mountain would be colder than his rooms, but the dwarves were clad in thick cloaks.

“Of course, I’m coming, Mister Dwalin,” He said while he pulled the coat on, “I need to convince this king of yours to take his head out of his royal behind.” Fíli and Kíli burst into hysterical cackles, pulling each other into standing and still chortling as they made their way back into the library and out the door. Dwalin followed behind, rolling his eyes and muttering insults all the way. Bilbo looked to Dirac. In answer to his unspoken question, she spread her wings and flew out ahead of him.

He hoped her presence would make things easier. Perhaps then he wouldn’t end up yelling at the King Under the Mountain.

But if Thorin Oakenshield was half as stubborn as Dwalin seemed, those chances were slim indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurred to me while writing this chapter that I totally made Bilbo into Rapunzel by accident. He's locked away in a tower. He talks to animals pretty much exclusively. Doesn't wear shoes. And he glows… but not when he sings. Sorry Disney, I own nothing and I didn't mean to I swear.
> 
> I know I've been dragging this on forever and I'm sorry for that. I will warn you that Thorin will not be in the next chapter because I felt that Bilbo's first time in his mountain needed its own chapter. You've all been incredibly patient and I love you for it! This next chapter will be the last short one though.
> 
> Leave a comment on your way out and may you find many happy OTPs and AUs!


	6. Memories Written and Burned on the Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo's first steps outside his rooms.

_"The damage was permanent; there would always be scars. But even the angriest scars faded over time until it was difficult to see them written on the skin at all, and the only thing that remained was the memory of how painful it had been." – Jodi Picoult_

Bilbo’s first steps outside of his rooms were not very memorable. He’d thought, on the many nights in which he imagined opening his door and exploring the halls of his mountain, that he’d wander them in a daze of excitement and curiosity, memorising every archway and stylised pillar, his light guiding his way. Surely, when he did manage to see the rest of his home, he’d be so riddled with emotion his person would burn the darkness out of every corner of the mountain.

He was riddled with emotion. But it was worry, fear, and a growing tide of anger that was battering against his ribs. And he couldn’t let his frustration out by lighting up the stone either. He spent most of his energy on tamping his emotions down and locking them up — something he didn’t have very much practise at, if at all.

He just hoped meeting _more_ dwarves wasn’t going to send him into a blind rage in the face of their stupidity.

They had to climb over fallen rock and debris every so often as they made their way down towards the centre of the mountain. They took so many twists and turns that Bilbo was sure he would have to have one of them show him the way back if he ever wanted to see his armchair again. The dwarves had left two torches in brackets outside Bilbo’s rooms, and they used them now to light the way. Fíli was carrying one and Dwalin the other.

“Prince Fíli, what exactly is an Arkenstone?” Bilbo asked the nearer of the two brothers as they went down yet another stone staircase. He needed something to take his mind off the sickening knot of emotions in his belly.

“The Arkenstone is the greatest treasure of the line of Durin,” Fíli answered, slowing to walk beside Bilbo. He was a head taller and his stride at least that much longer, “We’ve never seen it ourselves, but Irak’Adad says it was a thousand-faceted globe that shone like fire in the starlight.”

“Like the sun itself,” Kíli chimed in dreamily before sobering, “But it’s cursed.”

“Cursed?” Bilbo’s eyebrows shot up. First news of the battle and now curses. What had he wished upon himself?

“It corrupts the minds of kings,” said Fíli, face falling into worried lines. “Makes them mad with greed and obsession that breeds mistrust even amongst family.”

Bilbo gaped, “And your uncle wants to _find _it!?” This did not bode well, and the conversation did nothing to help his growing uneasiness.

“It allows the King Under the Mountain to call upon the seven dwarf families and unite their armies,” Kíli put in.

“Seven dwarf families?” Bilbo tried to think of any books that might have mentioned seven families. But he only knew of Durin’s line, called the Longbeards in some of his scrolls of the line of Erebor and the Iron Hills.

“There’s us Longbeards - Durin's Folk - then the Firebeards and Broadbeams, the Ironfists and Stiffbeards, and the Blacklocks and Stonefoots.” Fíli recited them with the tone of someone who’d been taught these things as a young dwarfling.

“I see,” Bilbo said slowly, “But, you know, I’d rather have one army than seven if they are led by a mad king.”

The brother’s glanced at Dwalin and Dirac, both of whom were speaking in low tones. Dirac must not have wanted Bilbo to overhear because she’d led the dwarf far enough away, he could only make out the sound of their voices and not decipher their words.

Kíli leaned down, "We happen to know where the stone is. Our mother and grandmother hid it before Ugmil ‘amad was killed, and Amad escaped."

"In my rooms," Bilbo guessed and had his suspicion confirmed at the furtive glances both dwarves shot Dwalin. “That’s why you two were skulking around the north side of the mountain when all of your Company’s efforts have been by the gate and the treasury.”

"We weren’t _skulking_,” Fíli pouted.

“Mister Boggins,” Kíli bit his lip as though weighing speaking against silence, “Mister Baggins, it’s very important that you keep this quiet.”

“Because of your uncle,” Bilbo nodded thoughtfully, “I won’t mention it to him, especially if he’ll lose what little sense you dwarves seem to have to it. But, can I ask,” he thought hard, “Where is it hidden? I’ve lived in my – in your grandmother’s rooms for half a century, and I’ve never seen a gem as you’ve described.”

“Amad says her mother buried it in the garden just before Smaug killed Ugmil 'amad as they fled.”

“Well… after this is taken care of, you’re more than welcome to… look around, I suppose.” Bilbo squirmed at the very thought of someone mucking about in his garden. If dwarves were anything like ravens, they’d ruin even the hardiest plant without trying. “With my supervision,” he amended.

Fíli and Kíli shot him twin looks of quiet gratitude, “Thank you, Mister Baggins.” Fíli said just before Dirac called them forward.

She’d landed on a pile of rubble that looked to have once been a column. It lay just before a break in the right side of the corridor through which they had been travelling. It was sloped slightly downward and curving in as though rounding the outside of the mountain. “I think it would be best if you and Mister Dwalin went ahead to explain as to our appearance. I was a nestling when the dwarves left us, but I remember the temper of your kings, and I do not wish this upon Mizimith.” That, Bilbo thought, was not comforting at all. Dwalin looked unhappy with this plan. He had his arms crossed and thick brows furrowed. “Once you are ready for us to meet the King Under the Mountain, call out, and we will come.”

“Come on, lads.” Dwalin huffed, striding through the opening. Bilbo heard him begin to descend yet more stairs. Kíli smiled at him reassuringly before they followed, Fíli handing him his torch on his way past.

Bilbo began to step forward to peek around the corner or trail them at a distance, but Dirac held out a wing, “Wait, Mizimith.”

“Why?” Bilbo asked quietly, “I just want to see–”

“That is the problem,” she cut in cryptically, “Wait here.”

Dirac spread her wings and swept through the arch. The only thing that kept Bilbo on the spot was his trust in her. She wouldn’t have told him to wait, have left him alone, without good reason. He didn’t have to wait long until he heard wings again.

“Alright, Mizimith,” Dirac sighed, alighting on the pile again, “Go on, but do not go farther than the balcony until you can control yourself.”

Bilbo almost questioned her, but instead just took her advice on faith, like he’d done his entire life, and stepped through the faded marble of the archway. Bilbo’s worries and questions and even his breath, left him the moment his eyes focused in the near dark.

His mountain was _magnificent_.

Bilbo was standing on a balcony not far above what once might have been a marketplace, though half the buildings were crushed beyond recognition. Above him was a vast cavern. Bridges and towers spiderwebbed across what must be the centre of the mountain, carvings etched into their surface and along the walls of the enormous space. It was so large – his mountain so tall – that Bilbo couldn’t make out the ceiling even with his brilliant light illuminating the darkness – growing even brighter than when Smaug had awoken. Dirac soared past him to twist amongst the architecture. Her blacker than pitch feathers glistening in Bilbo’s dazzling light like the veins of gold running through the walls.

There were carvings of dwarves in great battles and those in the simplest of vocations. Kings and queens were chiselled next to carpenters, statues of miners held axes high right next to bakers, children were playing along the outside of one of the closer stone parapets. Even the breaks in the stonework couldn’t mask the grandeur. Scorch marks and soot covered the green-hued marble at his feet, but in his light, Bilbo could make out the gold snaking through it all. The culture and life of the dwarves were marked here forever and even Smaug the Terrible couldn’t erase them.

It brought tears to his eyes, and Bilbo let them build and fall down his cheeks. “Dirac,” He whispered. She turned at once, nearly colliding with the axe of a stone sentry, and came to land upon the railing Bilbo clutched. He’d moved to the edge of the balcony without realising. There was dust on his hands and feet. He must have dropped the torch at some point. A sob left him shuddering.

“Dirac,” he gasped, “It’s beautiful.” He tried to tell her, but it seemed like his glow had obstructed his throat, turned it to crystal and stone like the mountain around them. “Oh, Yavanna, it was so beautiful. And Smaug – he,” Bilbo couldn’t find the words to convey how much he understood now.

The ravens had been telling him for fifty-one years of Smaug’s attack. Sad though it was, however, it’d been history, something that had happened to someone else, a long time ago, in a place that seemed far removed from his garden and his armchair by the fire. Even if, truly, it was just down the hall.

Now, looking at the glory that had once been Erebor, his home. It was a life that had been stolen from _him_. “He took it from us.” Bilbo sobbed, sliding to his knees and still staring out into his mountain, the radiance of his skin and hair and his tear-filled eyes setting it ablaze with their light and shards of colour.

“Mizimith,” Dirac jumped from the railing to the floor to sidle up close, so he could bury his fingers in the feathers of her chest.

If Smaug had never come at all, or if Bilbo had crawled out of the dirt a century sooner, he might have lived out his life playing in the halls of this kingdom. Maybe he’d have been a florist or a cook. Perhaps he’d have grown up knowing what he was and who his parents were. He wouldn’t have had to worry about orcs and goblins coming to steal everything away before he even had a chance to enjoy it.

Bilbo gave himself a moment to dwell, to finish weeping at the beauty and sorrow of it all, and then he wiped his eyes and nose, focusing instead on controlling himself and dimming his glow.

To follow those thoughts would be to court depression and madness. Bilbo had little time for either.

Once he was back to normal – his skin a little pale but certainly not luminescent, his hair just plain gold instead of glistening, and his eyes no longer leaving their amber, blue trails of light in the air – Bilbo detached from Dirac and stood. Now that he was paying attention, he could tell why she had told him not to go beyond the balcony. With only the torch to see by and without his glow overpowering every other source, Bilbo could make out the barest flicker of firelight past the staircase on his left and a level or two below. He wondered if the dwarves had seen him light up the cavern, or if they were too busy discussing him.

“Thank you, Dirac,” he said gratefully. His throat was sore with tears, and his voice sounded like a raven’s. “You knew I wouldn’t have been able to control that.”

“You’ve never had to, Mizimith. It’s a difficult thing I ask,” she began righting the feathers he’d mussed.

“Mister Baggins!” Dwalin called from the darkness. “Come here!”

Bilbo wiped at his face again, no doubt streaking dust as well as tears. “We’d better go,” he said, picking up the sputtering torch.

“Off to argue with more dwarves,” Dirac teased huskily in Raven-speech. “Only you would be so foolish, Mizimith.”

“Oh, as if you didn’t enjoy intimidating Mister Dwalin,” Bilbo laughed. It was weak, but he felt better, more settled, for the banter. “Come on then,” he said, trotting down the stairs and trying desperately to prepare himself for more dwarves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I accept your hate for this short chapter.
> 
> But the good news is that this is the LAST SHORT CHAPTER! They will all be at least a couple thousand words from here on out and will have a hell of a lot more plot development. And! Thorin is in the next chapter! I can't wait for you guys to read that scene its been finished for AGES. I had so much fun with it
> 
> As always, leave a comment on your way out and may you find many happy OTPs and AUs!


	7. King of Fools

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo finally meets the King Under the Mountain.

_"We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools." – Martin Luther King Jr._

Bilbo found that he was calmer approaching a camp of dwarves than he had been when he’d opened his door to Fíli, Kíli, and Dwalin. Perhaps the novelty was wearing off already. Maybe he was drained from seeing the destruction Smaug caused. But, he thought, it was probably his residual pity for dwarves’ misshapen feet.

He followed Dirac as she glided down the stairwell. It curved left into a large hall lined with weapons and doors with wide-open dirt-packed spaces down the middle. Bilbo could see where the dwarves were huddled partway down, near the left side wall, all of them staring at him.

The first things he truly saw, though, were the enormous stone statues of dwarves lining the walls. As tall as the hall itself which was at least thirty times his height, they glowered down at Bilbo and the dwarves with disdain. Bilbo had never felt smaller in his life. The farthest wall was a plain grey slate of geometric carvings with a guard's walk at the top. Bilbo could make out a couple of figures patrolling along it, the fading light of day silhouetting them.

This wasn’t the south gate, there was no exit in sight, and anyway, Roäc had told him Smaug had swept through the south gate, which led straight to the throne room and farther, into the treasury directly below it. The wyrm hadn’t wasted his time with the rest of the mountain beside scorching it free of any lingering dwarves.

He was prepared for the awe sweeping through him this time and was able to bury it below the determination, mild annoyance, and nerves.

“Mister Boggins!” Kíli called, waving him over to the gaggle of dwarves and sleeping cots. He followed behind Dirac who flew over to perch on the gargantuan foot of the nearest statue.

Bilbo shivered. Even the statues had ugly feet.

Dwarves of all sizes surrounded the princes and Dwalin. Some had white, black, or red hair; one sported a strange skunk-like pattern. There was one who was wider than he was tall and another who looked younger than everyone except maybe Kíli and Fíli. A leaner dwarf with odd points in his red hair and beard pulled him out of Bilbo’s sightline. Dwalin was standing between a dwarf with the same nose as him and a white curling beard, and another with barely any beard at all. His chin and temples were speckled with grey. He wore a scowl that could rival Dwalin’s and an unsettling look in his eyes as he surveyed Bilbo that he didn’t like in the least.

A strange swooping sensation rushed through him at seeing them all. He could hardly believe they were here. After a moment or two of silent staring, Bilbo took matters into his own hands, “Bilbo Baggins,” he bowed, “At your service.”

Almost before he was finished speaking, their eyes widened and the lot of them began whispering amongst themselves. Bilbo heard mutterings of “Khuzdul?” and “How could he know!?” and “Who would have taught him!?” before the dwarf with Dwalin’s nose shushed everyone else and stepped forward.

He bowed, smiling genially, but answered in Common Speech instead of the Khuzdul Bilbo had greeted them in, “Well met, Mister Baggins. I am Balin son of Fundin. You met my brother, Dwalin.” Dwalin grunted without looking at Bilbo, “You’ll have to understand, Mister Baggins, we weren’t expecting anyone to be in the mountain when we arrived – besides the dragon, that is. We have a few questions.”

A grinning dwarf wearing a strange hat nudged another and whispered in Khuzdul, “Bloody right we weren’t expecting anyone. If I’d expected something that pretty was being kept by the dragon I wouldn’t have dawdled so long.”

Bilbo felt heat flush him from his chest to the tips of his ears. There was that word again. _Pretty_. He focused instead on answering Balin, in Westron this time, “Of course, Master Balin, I understand.” He hesitated, “But… I assume Mister Dwalin has told you everything? I don’t know what else…”

Balin waved a hand, “He’s told us what he could, but we’d rather hear it from you if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Bilbo said again, and he did understand. He was a stranger in what they had thought of – for hundreds of years – as their empty home. He wouldn’t let them push him around or out, but he was willing to sit through some questions. It would only be fair seeing as he planned to ask them more than a few of his own.

“Is there somewhere I could put this? Only my arm is getting a bit tired and–” Almost before he could finish his sentence Dwalin came forward to pluck the torch from his hand and place it into a sconce near where Dirac was perched. It would have been too high for Bilbo to reach. “Thank you, Mister Dwalin.”

The dwarf merely grumbled in response.

Bilbo decided a more thorough introduction would stave off some of their questions, “I suppose I could clear a few things up right away. I, ah, I was born in the mountain, in the garden of the rooms I’ve lived in all my life. I don’t know who my family is or where I came from, only that I am not a dwarf, nor an elf, nor a man. It was the ravens who taught me languages. Obviously, I can speak Khuzdul and Westron but also Sindarin, and Raven-speech. Although, they say that I’m best at Sindarin and Westron.” Bilbo opened his mouth to say more but he couldn’t think of anything else off the top of his head. “That’s it, I guess. What other questions do you have?”

There was a moment of silence after he was done before the dwarves turned in on themselves, huddling in a circle with the occasional head popping up to make sure he was still where they’d left him. Bilbo tried his hardest not to eavesdrop, but it was difficult with words like “spy” and “elves” and “burglar”.

He was only made to wait a few minutes more before the circle of dwarves turned outward again, with Balin at the head. “And just how long have you been here, Mister Baggins?”

Bilbo had to suppress a sigh, “I’ve just turned fifty-one this past month.”

The dwarves exclaimed their surprise nearly in unison, “Fifty-one!?”

It was the young dwarf Bilbo hadn’t been introduced to yet that took the least amount of time to recover and asked Bilbo, quite loudly over his brethren, but in a tone more akin to awe than suspicion, “How did you survive fifty-one years with a dragon as your neighbour?”

“Well, he’s been asleep for as long as I’ve lived in my rooms.” Bilbo made sure to avoid any direct dwarf gazes when he continued, “Until recently, that is.”

A few dwarves shifted almost guiltily but it didn’t stop the severe one with the curious lack of beard from demanding, “How do we know you are not a spy sent by the elves, enchanted to look like us – or as close as they can manage?”

“I beg your pardon,” Bilbo said guilelessly, blinking at who he almost surely knew was Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain. He was like Kíli in colouring and Fíli about the eyes and chin – only noticeable because the older dwarf couldn't hide his behind a beard. “But I have a strict policy of being interrogated only by those whose names I happen to know, and I do not believe we have been introduced.”

A round of coughing seemed to overtake Fíli, Kíli, the pointy-haired ginger dwarf and the one with the hat who had called Bilbo ‘pretty’.

An angry flush rose in dwarf’s cheeks even as he drew himself up to his full height. “I am Thorin son of Thráin, son of Thrór, King Under the Mountain,” he intoned in a voice meant to carry over a battlefield. It rang through the cavernous hall, “You will answer my question.”

Before Bilbo could tell the King where exactly he could shove his question as well as his tone, Fíli stepped forward. “Uncle,” he said, “We had to dig him out of Grandmother’s rooms.”

Kíli tugged on his uncle’s coat sleeve, “Fee’s right, Uncle. The whole hallway was blocking his door before we got through it.” He turned to Dwalin, “Tell him Dwalin!”

Dwalin grunted, “Aye, Thorin. The lads are right. And, unless the ravens are taking orders from elves he’s telling the truth.”

A flutter of wings drew Bilbo’s eye to Dirac who, surprisingly, hadn’t said anything until then. Now she stood and stared down from her perch. “Hail, Thorin son of Thráin, son of Thrór, King Under the Mountain. Welcome home.”

Bilbo thought, for an angry indignant second, that Oakenshield was going to ignore Dirac. After another moment of Bilbo and the king glaring at each other, he reluctantly turned his gaze to her.

She continued, “I am Dirac, daughter of Björk, of Ravenhill. Roäc has chosen me to speak for the ravens in his absence. We stand behind Bilbo Baggins, who is also Mizimith of Ravenhill. To scorn him is to scorn us.”

Oakenshield regarded her with slightly less mistrust than he did Bilbo, “You stand with this… intruder?”

“Intruder!?” Bilbo sputtered, fingers curling into fists. He resisted the urge to stomp up to the king and stab a finger into his irritating face - barely, “Master Oakenshield, I’ve been here my entire life, in fact, I think I’ve lived in this mountain longer than you have!”

Before _his majesty_ could return his words with shouting or possibly a sword to the gut as his expression indicated he might prefer, Dirac spoke again in a tone Bilbo new from childhood; calm threaded through with barely contained fury.

Thorin Oakenshield was in trouble.

“Do you question the ravens? Roäc, son of Carc, raised Mizimith himself as did I along with all of what remained of Erebor’s ravens. We claim him as our own. You would go against our chief's wishes after he has left his home, at your request, as an army marches on us?” She tilted her huge feathered head to pin the dwarf with one black eye, “Will you be the first King Under the Mountain with no ravens at his disposal?”

Bilbo didn’t quite understand the importance of Dirac’s words but from the faces of the dwarves, he supposed that as far as threats went, hers was fairly serious.

Oakenshield stared at Dirac for a full minute before he addressed Bilbo again, “What is it you want Mister Baggins?”

Bilbo blinked. His clenched fists went slack. Want? What did he want? He wanted to meet dwarves and elves and men. He wanted orcs and goblins to stay far away from his mountain. He wanted life returned to Erebor along with its ruddy king. “Well, I…” He cleared his throat and raised his chin to meet Oakenshield’s gaze head-on, “I suppose I want exactly what you do, Master Oakenshield. I want to live peacefully in my mountain.”

The dwarf king’s eyes softened. They seemed to lose a bit of that unsettling manic light, but that could have been Bilbo’s wishful thinking. The king inclined his head and spoke in a tone that conveyed a hundred years and more of hardship and home-sickness. “That,” he said, “I can understand, Mister Baggins.”

“I don’t suppose, then,” Bilbo continued, seizing at his only opportunity to discuss what he came here to discuss, “you would be willing to talk to me about what you’re doing to protect the mountain from orcs and goblins?”

Balin stepped up to answer before Oakenshield could, “We’ve sent the chief of Ravenhill, Roäc,” he nodded at Dirac, “to Lord Dáin Ironfoot of the Iron Hills for aid as they are our closest brethren. I imagine they will be here in a few weeks’ time.”

“Is that taking into account that they probably won’t leave as soon Roäc arrives?” Bilbo asked blithely, “I don’t know much about armies and running a kingdom but I’m guessing it will take more than a day to organize and prepare to transport an entire army of dwarves.”

Oakenshield 's glare returned, “Do not worry yourself with what doesn’t concern you, Mister Baggins.”

“Obviously_, _this concerns me,” Bilbo threw up his hands, “As I am the poor fool who _lives here_.” He turned to Dwalin’s brother with pleading eyes, “Master Balin, please, tell me you plan to do more? Will you send word to the men? The elves?”

The way Oakenshield’s face whitened with rage, Bilbo expected him to scream and shout but instead, his voice came out hushed with fevered hatred, “We have no reason to trust the elves, Mister Baggins. Do you think we did not go to our closest neighbours in our hour of need one hundred seventy years ago?” He advanced on Bilbo, each word ringing with bitterness. Bilbo didn’t so much stand his ground as he was hypnotized to the spot by Oakenshield’s words and emotion. “Fleeing the destruction of our home we went to our once neighbours seeking shelter and aid. Did the Elvenking help us? Did he raise a finger to help our starving children? Our sick? Our injured? No.”

“Irak’Adad…” Kíli whispered. Bilbo couldn’t see him around Oakenshield. He sounded scared and confused. Young.

Oakenshield was directly in front of him now, so that Bilbo had to look nearly straight up to keep his face in his sight. “He did not. Thranduil, the great King, turned his back on us. He turned away from the suffering of my people! I WOULD NOT ASK THE ELVES FOR HELP AGAIN SHOULD SMAUG RISE FROM THE GREAT LAKE TO DEVOUR ME HIMSELF!” Oakenshield roared his promise into the small space between him and Bilbo, breathing heavily and eyes alight with something disturbing.

“Thorin, lad,” Balin’s hand came down hard on Oakenshield’s shoulder as he tugged his king back out of Bilbo’s reach. Both he and Dwalin were staring at their king with troubled, frightened looks.

Bilbo knew he should give Oakenshield time, he should let Balin – who seemed the most sensible – calm him before trying to talk any sense into the king. But Oakenshield did not drop his wild eyes from Bilbo’s, and Bilbo did not wait for Balin to finish.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

His words made Balin pause, as Oakenshield simply stared.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, looking past their king to Dwalin and Fíli and Kíli and dwarves whose names he did not know, “That you had to endure such misery. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain you must have felt – the pain you must feel.” Bilbo took a shuddering breath to control his own indignation aimed at elves he had never met. This was bloody exhausting. He looked back at Oakenshield who now had both Dwalin and Balin’s hands upon is shoulders, “But, Master Oakenshield, for the sake of your people _now_ you need to put aside the past. You don’t have the luxury to hold grudges when there is an army headed straight for you. You need the elves to– ”

“I don’t need the elves,” Oakenshield seethed.

“If not the elves, then at least the men!" His hands clenched against the need to release his anger in more eye-catching ways. Dirac had said they wouldn't understand, and their king's blind hate-fueled reaction only drove home how bad it would be if Bilbo let his shine out now. "What have the men ever done except also suffer Smaug’s attack?”

Oakenshield 's face was sallow with suspicion and greed. Had he looked so pale only minutes before? “The men only want our gold. The treasure of Erebor that is rightly ours!”

“One of those _men_ is responsible for slaying Smaug, surely you owe him a debt!” Bilbo couldn’t remember the bowman’s name in that moment, but he forged ahead anyway, “If that man hadn’t defeated the beast, he would have returned to destroy you all.” And Bilbo as well, but this idiot didn’t seem to particularly care about anyone outside his gold and his grievances. This was not the king he'd expected when he’d daydreamed of the dwarves returning.

Oakenshield’s eyes narrowed into slits, voice lowering dangerously. “I owe him _nothing_,” he spat. “And there is no need to fall into his debt when Dáin and his kin will answer our call.”

“Our enemies will be upon us in three weeks’ time,” Dirac interrupted, her croaky voice easily cutting through their argument.

Bilbo gestured at the raven, “If your kinsmen arrive too late you will be left alone against an enemy you have no hope of defeating! And once they do arrive, they will be walking right into the hands of your enemies and will also fall. You will have wasted not only your life and the lives of this Company, but any man, elf, or dwarf that fights in this battle be they allies or not! The orcs and goblins _will_ win if we don’t band together.” Bilbo could tell his words did nothing in the face of Oakenshield’s thick-headedness.

“Thorin,” The pointy-haired dwarf said, making Bilbo jump. He’d all but forgotten about the other dwarves in the heat of his ire. Now that their presence was remembered he saw that most of them were watching him, eyes wide in awe. It made Bilbo shift uncomfortably. “Mister Baggins is right. You know I loathe the tree-shaggers as much as you do, but in this, we need their help.” He glanced around the group, eyes landing on Bilbo once before returning to his King, “There’s no sense in us all dying at the hands of Azog just for pride and bitterness.”

Oakenshield whirled on the dwarf, Bilbo obviously momentarily forgotten, “You would have me beg Thranduil for help after he abandoned us? Now, after he imprisoned us!?”

The boiling feeling of light in Bilbo’s gut subsided for a split second. Imprisoned? When Kíli had mentioned being prisoners of elves Bilbo hadn’t made the connection to the elves of Mirkwood. It made Oakenshield’s animosity more understandable, at any rate.

Fíli spoke up then too, “Nori is right, Uncle, and so is Mister Baggins. Wouldn’t it be better to be sure of our victory? If we offered the elves gold, and the men promise to help rebuild both our cities together, they would fight with us.”

“And it’s not as though either wants orcs and goblins as neighbors,” Kíli muttered in Khuzdul before his brother jabbed him in the side with his elbow. “_Ow!_”

“Surely, we can spare a few coins to ensure our home is safe.” Fíli implored his uncle with pleading eyes Bilbo was sure he practised in the mirror. “I’d be willing to give up my share.”

From where Bilbo was standing it didn’t seem to have any effect on his uncle. He turned on his sister-son with avarice in his voice that chilled Bilbo to his very bones. “Have you no dwarf pride?” he asked. “The treasure inside this mountain is ours and ours alone. By my sword, I will not part with _a single coin_.”

Bilbo ignored the chills running down his spine and gaped at him, “Are you listening to yourself? Promising death over gold and treasure?” He could feel his restraint wavering. He had to leave before he started shining like a candle in the dark with fury and now, a bit of fear. Both, coincidentally, growing steadily because of Thorin Oakenshield. “I can’t tell if you are mad or simply stupid!”

“Do not speak to me in such a manner!” Oakenshield roared, “I am King Under the Mountain!”

“If you don’t listen to reason there won’t be a mountain for you to be king under!” Bilbo’s laugh was high and grating in its falsity, “In fact, a more apt title would be _King of Fools_!” And with that Bilbo turned on his heel and stalked back the way he had come for fear that his control would fail, and he would blind them with his anger. He ignored the enraged roar that echoed through the cavernous hall behind and around him until he reached the stairs.

He climbed them as fast as he could, considering this was the farthest he’d walked in his entire life. Bilbo’s knees nearly gave out on him as he finally got out of sight of the dwarves and he released the breath he’d been unconsciously holding as he kept his light in check. He caught himself on a wall and forced his legs to keep staggering along. He’d left the torch with the dwarves but his light was more than enough to illuminate the way.

Dirac caught up to him just as he was stumbling through the archway where she had made him wait only minutes ago. And now he’d gone and angered the King Under the Mountain, probably alienating the only other beings he had ever met.

“I shouldn’t have lost my temper,” Bilbo sighed.

“I’m rather surprised you didn’t lose it sooner, Mizimith, with the load of droppings he was spewing.” Dirac said as she slowed to a lazy glide next to him, “Sit down, Mizimith, you’re shaking.”

“I just want to go home,” he whispered, glancing at her, “Will you show me the way?”

Her voice softened, “Of course, Mizimith.” She took the lead.

They were quiet as they trekked to his rooms. Dirac left Bilbo to his brooding. When, at last, they reached his rooms Bilbo had never been so happy to collapse on his bed. He heard the door shut and felt the bed sink a bit as Dirac settled near his feet. Though still troubled and frustrated, one thought gripped him as sleep dragged him down into darkness.

He had dined with dwarves. He had walked the halls of his mountain and knew there were more to explore, and it had all been worth waiting for. Even if he had to deal with Thorin Oakenshield.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the late update! I was hella sick the past few days, and I could barely go to work let alone do any writing. The next chapter might be a little late too I'm sorry to say, but I'll try really hard not to let that happen!
> 
> Anywho... Don't you love it when they say the title of the movie in the movie? Quite frankly gold sick Thorin makes me and Bilbo want to call him a whole lot worse but Bilbo is still a Baggins! And it would look weird if the narrator started calling characters out on their idiocy.
> 
> As always, leave a comment on your way out and may you find many happy OTPs and AUs!


	8. To Save Or To Savour, That Is The Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo gardens and devises a plan that could save his mountain.

_"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savour the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." – _ _E. B. White_

Bilbo’s thighs were incredibly sore when he woke up the next morning.

“Stairs,” he grumbled into his pillow, “I never want to see stairs again.”

Dirac was still settled at the foot of his bed, head down and eyes closed in sleep. Bilbo quietly dragged his aching body into the other room to relieve himself. He decided to take a bath as well and spent nearly an hour soaking in the water. It wasn’t as hot as usual, and it occurred to him he hadn’t bathed since the day Smaug was defeated. 

He wondered how long he would have hot water before the residual warmth from the firedrake would be gone. He could ask the dwarves how they used to heat the baths. An irrepressible smile stretched his face at the idea of _dwarves_ he could _speak_ to. Imagine all the questions they could answer! And maybe he could offer them the use of his bathroom if they helped him with the hot water, they must have travelled for weeks or months without a proper soak.

Then he remembered that he was really very angry with their king.

Bilbo could still feel bone-deep exhaustion from trying to control his emotions the night before. Blast Thorin Oakenshield and his thick-headedness. And blast the dwarves who stood behind him. 

His mind racing far faster than he’d like at this hour of the morning, Bilbo climbed out of the bath and dried off. When he stepped into his bedroom again, Dirac was up and cleaning her feathers. After dressing, Bilbo went to the garden to collect fruit for their breakfast.

It was while they were eating in front of the empty fireplace, Dirac focusing on her own food while Bilbo watched the sun drift up and slowly out of sight behind the clouds, that Bilbo thought of something peculiar. 

“Dirac?” She made a questioning croak. “When did you figure out the dwarves were coming back?” Dirac didn’t answer, which was answer enough for Bilbo. He frowned at her, more hurt than angry, “Why didn’t you tell me they were coming? You avoided me for weeks before they came to the mountain.”

She gave a rattling sigh, “I knew for certain when they reached Esgaroth, but I suspected they were returning to the mountain when a thrush told me dwarves had been captured by the Elvenking the month before.”

“A month!?” Real hurt curled low in Bilbo’s chest, and a sullen glow started up under his skin, “Dirac, why didn’t you tell me?”

Dirac turned her head to fix one black eye on him, “Bilbo, what would you have done if Roäc or I had told you the dwarves were returning?”

Bilbo opened his mouth but could only think of the days between Smaug’s destruction and the first knock on his door. He’d puttered around uselessly, fretting and anxious. He’d yelled at more than one nestling who’d come to his rooms attempting to cheer him up.

Dirac sidled closer on the arm of Bilbo’s chair, “That is why Bilbo. I would have only caused you misery in waiting. How was I to know if they would even make it? For weeks it seemed as though they would not even make it past Mirkwood. I could not give you such hope only to tear it from you, Mizimith.”

Bilbo dragged his fingers between the feathers of her chest, “Fine, I suppose you’re right. But… you won’t do anything like that again, will you? I… I’d like you to tell me and let me go through the pain. I’d rather that than have you lie to me. Promise you won’t do it again?”

She rattled out a sigh again, “I won’t, Mizimith, I promise.”

He chose to believe her, tugging at her feathers gently until she nuzzled his face with her sharp beak.

They spent the rest of the morning gardening, or Bilbo did. Dirac sat on the branches of the apple tree and watched him work, occasionally taking off to fly into the Desolation and back with small rodents to eat. Bilbo had a long break for lunch but continued taking his frustration out on the weeds and new vegetables until his stomach was growling at him again. By then his hands were aching from holding his trowel, and he’d planted new rows of carrots, peas, garlic, and onions. They’d be ready to harvest by the end of winter. 

If he was around to harvest them. 

If they didn’t all perish in three weeks. 

If Thorin Oakenshield managed to pull his kingly head out of his kingly _arse_.

His breath left him in an irritated huff as he began to put his tools away. Once done, he picked an apple for a quick snack to ward off hunger until suppertime, rinsing it off in the water basin between the bookshelves in his bedroom. After Bilbo had washed his fruit and his hands, he wandered into his library, Dirac following him quietly. 

Reading up on swordplay and battle tactics was in order. He’d need the maps too, the ones of Dale and Erebor of course and maybe the Mirkwood map just in case. There was also a treaty or two between Erebor and Dale that might be useful. Not for the first time, he cursed at the absence of any helpful book on dwarven culture. There were books on dancing and dwarven recipes but not a thing about their courts. 

“Something like _How To Make A Good First Impression With Royalty _would have been useful yesterday,” he muttered. 

Dirac made a noise suspiciously close to a laugh, but when Bilbo turned to glare at her, she was preening her flight feathers. 

He carried all of the books and scrolls he’s picked out back into his bedroom, the apple was held in his mouth, so he didn’t have to put it down. He spread them out in front of the fireplace, placing the books and scrolls around him in a semi-circle.

Bilbo read through _Battles Of The First Age: A Study In Strategy _and was paging through _Simple Swordplay_ for the chapter on multiple opponents when a distant knock came from the library door, startling him out of his reading stupor. 

For a split second, Bilbo’s heart leapt at the prospect of having guests again, but he quickly reminded himself that barely any of the guests in his mountain liked him at all.

Bilbo got up and followed Dirac as she glided into his library. He hesitated in the middle of the room, frowning at the door and wringing his hands. He wished he’d thought to turn the bolt the night before. It struck him as rude to lock the door while someone was waiting out in the hall where they could probably hear it.

“Who is it?” he called, tilting his sensitive ears closer to the door. 

“It’s Fíli, Mister Baggins.”

“And Kíli!”

“We wondered if you were busy? Might we have a look in your garden?”

Indignation made his voice high, “Why on earth would I do that?”

“Please Mister Baggins, it’s very important,” Kíli wheedled.

“If you think I’ll let you blunder through my garden right now, you’re madder than your uncle! I told you I’d let you search for that blasted stone _after_ everything was taken care of!” Bilbo glared at the door, ignoring the niggling voice that told him he was being childish and petty. His light grew sharp enough Dirac had to hide her face. Bilbo took a calming breath, “Honestly, gardening is the only thing keeping me from smacking him around the head with a skillet.”

“You know,” Kíli whispered, obviously not intending Bilbo to hear, “I think I’d like to see that.”

“Kee, focus. Mister Baggins, please–”

“No!” Bilbo stomped his foot, “Go back to your uncle and don’t come back until he’s promised not to get us all killed!”

His answer was sullen silence and then the odd thudding sound of two pairs of dwarven feet retreating down the hall. Bilbo retreated as well, into his bedroom. He sat down in the middle of his books and scrolls and tried to forget about his anger.

Hours later, however, he was still pouring through texts. He was focusing on the two treaties between Erebor and Dale, one for trade and the other for alliance in times of war. The treatises would still technically be in effect if Dale was still standing. Perhaps if the children’s children of the last King of Dale still lived, and if Bilbo could find them, they might stand a chance of convincing Thorin Oakenshield to join forces with him.

But even then, what kind of forces would a king without a city have? Probably just as many soldiers as the dwarves had now. Frustrated, Bilbo got up and threw the paper onto the floor. He paced from one end of the room to the other, trying to think of _something_. 

The problem was that Oakenshield was a king, and Bilbo was just – well, he was just Bilbo. His only allies were the ravens, and they could not convince Thorin Oakenshield to put aside old grievances to save them all any better than Bilbo could. 

Bilbo ran an agitated hand through his hair, collapsing onto his armchair, “The first king I run across and I throw insults and accusations. That was incredibly unwise, especially with war coming.” He dropped his head into his hands. “Sweet Green Lady, what was I thinking?” 

“There are other kings,” Dirac sighed, “And not all are as stubborn as a dwarf king is, don’t worry Mizimith. You’ll get a second chance.”

Bilbo’s head shot up to stare blankly in front of him; an excited glow burgeoning under his skin, “That’s it,” he breathed.

Dirac stopped grooming herself to regard him, warily, “What is?”

“Other kings! The Elvenking of Mirkwood!” He laughed, jumping up to wear another path in the rug, “Oh, I’ve been thinking about this all wrong! Instead of trying to convince Thorin to _ask _for help, I should convince Thranduil to _offer _it!”

Dirac shifted on her feet, “Mizimith, I don’t think…”

He cut her off, “Dirac, Thranduil is on his way here, yes?”

“…yes?” 

“He must realize that a force that threatens to take Erebor is a force that could be used against him! Surely, the Elvenking is not so stupid as to refuse to help when it is in his best interest? He would see reason. More reason than this oaf of a dwarf king does.” Bilbo stopped halfway between his chair and the archway to his garden, wagging a finger in the air, “I have to get to him before he reaches the gates. Before he speaks to Thorin bloody Oakenshield. He’ll never want an alliance after a conversation with him.” He rushed to grab his coat from where he had tossed it on his chair the night before. “I’ll need my coat, yes, and, and I don’t know, what do you wear to go see a king?”

“You went and saw a king yesterday, and you weren’t wearing anything special.”

Bilbo thought rudely that Thorin Oakenshield didn’t count, before shaking his head, “Oh, I suppose you’re right. I should just go.”

But before he could make it to the door, Dirac landed in front of him. He had to stop before he tripped over her. “Mizimith, wait.”

“What?”

“Even if the Elvenking recognizes the importance of not having orcs in Erebor, what makes you think he will help? What does he care if thirteen dwarves die in the mountain? If you die? From his perspective, thirteen dwarves won’t be an advantage when the orcs and goblins come. He could simply take the mountain once they have perished, or deal with them when they win. It’s not as though the dwarves would pay him, either. The dwarves won’t even pay the men whose cities they helped burn to the ground.”

Curse it all, but she was right. Not to mention the Elvenking had already locked up the dwarves once. He considered it, tapping one finger against his throat in thought, “Why don’t we pay him? There must be something in this mountain he wants.”

“Yes,” Dirac croaked exasperatedly, “Exactly what everyone else wants; gold.”

Bilbo shook his head, light shimmering with excitement just beneath his skin, “No, I don’t think Thranduil would march on the mountain simply for greed. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking,” he began to pace again, “Or what if there was something in the mountain the Elvenking wanted _specifically_. Something important enough that he would come with an army…”

Dirac hopped nervously in front of the archway leading to the library and the hall door, trying to keep in between it and Bilbo’s moving form. 

Bilbo hummed in thought, “Maybe I’ll just go down to the treasury and fill a bag with whatever I can get my hands on. That might be enough to persuade them to sit down and be civil at least, something for them to trade with when this is all over–”

“Bilbo, _no_,” Dirac interrupted, “Stealing from dwarves is very difficult and very stupid. They never forgive, and they certainly never forget.”

“Who cares if they forgive me, as long as we’re all alive!?” Bilbo squared his shoulders, “I’ll go right now, they’re probably all busy eating and patrolling the gate to notice me sneaking in and out of the treasury. Their ears aren’t very good anyway, I’m sure I could get by them.” He made to leave through the library again only to be stopped by Dirac’s angry croak. 

“No, Mizimith.” 

“No?”

She heaved a coughing sigh, “Not tonight at least. I know better than to tell you not to do something. But it is a long way to Dale, which is where the elven host will rest next, and you could barely go down to the gate and back again.” Bilbo made a face. “You have no knowledge of gems and jewels except what you’ve read in books. You don’t know if what you retrieve from the treasury will be enough.”

Bilbo’s eyes sparked as an idea struck him, “Of course! Dirac, how long would it take to fly to the Elven host? To get word to the Elvenking?”

Dirac’s suspicion was evident in her response, “I don’t know, maybe a few hours. A few more to return with a response. Why? What are you planning now?”

“If I can get a message to the King Thranduil and ask for his demands, I’d know exactly what I was looking for, wouldn’t I? Oh! I should also ask when he expects to arrive in Dale, so I know how long I have,” Bilbo corrected himself at Dirac’s indignant trill, “_we_ have to search the treasury. Will you ask Käric or Hörk or one of the other faster ravens to deliver the message?”

Dirac hopped from foot to foot but nodded her large head, “It couldn’t hurt, I suppose, as long as the raven isn’t seen by the dwarves. I’ll see who would be willing.” Her voice became stern as though he were a small nestling, “But you won’t be leaving tonight, no matter what the Elvenking replies with.”

Bilbo rolled his eyes, “I promise I won’t go traipsing out of the mountain without you, my coat, and at the very least supper.”

“Good,” she said, “Now, decide on your message while I fetch a messenger and some fish for you. Don’t get any more bright ideas.”

“Oh, haha.” Bilbo couldn’t help rolling his eyes again. “You think you’re funny, but you’re not.”

“Yes, I am,” Dirac laughed.

By the time she returned with Hörk and two salmon, Bilbo had combed through more texts to determine the best phrasing. Hörk was just the bird Bilbo would have chosen for this. He was older than Dirac but nowhere near the age of Roäc or the other elders. He even had some experiences in dealing with elves.

Hörk had been the one to attempt to take bits of fabric and food from them rather than the Master of Esgaroth. He’d told Bilbo that there was a shade of green fabric just hanging out a window he thought Bilbo might like. Only, he’d gotten caught by one of the guards and had had to leave it behind. Since then he was at least on speaking terms with the guard, who he called Tauriel and “my great elven foe” with equal regularity.

Bilbo had a pot of stew bubbling in the fire and a smattering of more books and scrolls spread out around the fireplace, carefully out of reach of the flames. He gutted and prepared the fish, tossing it into the stew to cook for a few minutes while the ravens made themselves comfortable on his bed. 

“Alright, I had to look up a few treatises for the right wording, but I think I’ve done it right. Hörk, this is the message I’d like you to take to the elven host.” Bilbo cleared his throat and began in Sindarin as he wore a path in the carpeting. 

“King Thranduil – no, no sorry – Thranduil, King of the Greenwood and the Woodland Realm, I regret that I cannot first ask these questions of you in person, but time is of the essence. I’m sure you are aware that an army of goblins and orcs, hearing of the death of the dragon, Smaug the Terrible, has begun to make their way to the Lonely Mountain. As our common enemy draws nearer, we within the mountain realize this is no time for prejudice and past wrongs. We ask for the support of your sound strategy and the aid of your powerful army so that we may face these enemies together and secure a future where the Greenwood and the kingdom of Erebor can, once again, grow and prosper together. After considering our proposal, please send the raven, Hörk, with your answer and approximate expected arrival in Dale. If there is a request that those of us in the mountain can fulfil, please send it with him as well. A representative will meet you the night of your arrival. I wish you swift and safe travels.”

Bilbo stopped and turned to the ravens, “Understand?” Hörk nodded and repeated the message back to him. Bilbo nodded along as he listened, simultaneously tugging and twisting his fingers. “Do you think it too informal? Not straight forward enough? I didn’t want to lie exactly, but I doubt he would heed a message from someone he has no knowledge of. I thought if he assumes I am speaking on behalf of the dwarves, then he’d be more likely to parley.”

Dirac scoffed, “We never should have taught you Sindarin. Such a devious language. Perhaps, you’d be less trouble if we’d only taught you Westron.”

Hörk bumped into Dirac, “I think you did very well, Mizimith. Very diplomatic. Roäc would be proud.”

“He’ll be proud if you actually do manage to hit Oakenshield in the head with a skillet.”

Hörk coughs out a croaking laugh. Bilbo picks some pieces of fish from the stew for him. “Thank you, Hörk. Fly fast and true.” Hörk rubbed his beak in Bilbo’s curls before eating the salmon and winging out into the dimming sky.

Bilbo retrieved two bowls and pick more pieces of meat and vegetables from the pot for Dirac to eat. He paused as he filled his own bowl, looking thoughtfully at his door and the newly available mountain beyond.

He had never had neighbours before – unless one counted the dragon and Bilbo certainly didn’t. He wondered if the dwarves would like some food. Dwalin had said they hadn’t eaten much besides bland soup and… what had Fíli and Kíli called it? Cram? Whatever it was didn’t sound very appetizing at all. 

“Do you think I should invite the dwarves? Fíli and Kíli at least? I was awfully rude to them earlier.”

Dirac’s wings shifted in the parody of a shrug, “I think the princes can be trusted, and you will need friends close to King Thorin. Perhaps Master Balin and that pointy-haired dwarf would also like to come. 

“Would you ask for them? Just the princes and Master Balin, if the king is nearby, I think. If I invite all the dwarves who agreed with me, I feel they will not be allowed to come at all.”

“Always so clever, our Mizimith,” Dirac chuckled. Bilbo smiled as he opened the door for her, and she glided through. He stood at the doorway for a moment, staring down the hallway littered on either side with rubble, watching her fade out of his light’s reach. He came back to himself and hurried inside to prepare for more guests. 

Twin knocks sounded from the library just as Bilbo was placing spoons in the other three bowls he’d placed on the hearth before the fire.

When he opened the door leading to the hall, he was met with two sullen-looking princes and Master Balin with Dirac on his arm. 

“Mister Baggins,” Fíli said formally, “We apologize for our kin’s words and his treatment of you.” 

Kíli nodded vigorously, “We’re trying to convince him of your side, Mister Boggins.” Fíli elbowed him, “I mean Mister Baggins.” At that moment they reminded Bilbo so fiercely of scolded nestlings that he couldn’t help but smile, “It’s not your fault, lads, don’t worry.” As though their strings had been cut, the princes sagged in relief.

“Thanks for inviting us to dinner, Mister Boggins,” Kíli said happily, all trace of guilt forgotten. He sauntered past Bilbo before the latter could reply.

Fíli grinned, “Don’t mind him, Mister Boggins, he was really worried you were angry with us.”

“Me?” Bilbo asked, gesturing for the two older dwarves to come in out of the hall. “I’d be more frightened of that – er, I mean, - of your uncle than little old me.” 

His ears burned as Fíli laughed. “Kíli doesn’t make friends very easily,” he said simply before he set off to join his brother. 

Bilbo turned a furrowed brow on Balin who shrugged good-naturedly, “The boys have taken a liking to you Mister Baggins. I promise it’s a good thing.”

He wasn’t sure he could agree with Balin when, five minutes later, Fíli and Kíli began tossing bits of meat from their bowls into the air for Dirac to catch. Never mind that she had her own bowl, and was a grown raven.

“You should be embarrassed,” he told Dirac as he settled into his armchair, fighting the smile off his face as she dived to snag a bit of fish out of the air to the cheers of the two princes. “A raven your age acting like a nestling with her first flight feathers.” 

“Please,” Dirac scoffed, “A nestling would never be able to fly like me.” A piece of pink meat hit her in the chest and became stuck in her feathers. This prompted her to dive at the boys repeatedly, pecking teasingly at their ears and hair. 

The boys finally called out their surrender and fell in an ungraceful heap onto the couch, digging back into their stew. Balin chortled the whole time, leaning back into the cushions of the only other armchair with his own bowl in his lap. “You should know better than to offend a raven of Ravenhill, lads. Feisty and fearsome birds they were, back in the day.”

“They still are,” Dirac said primly. She landed on the arm of the couch the princes had claimed, placing herself between them and Bilbo. With a noise of annoyance, she began preening her feathers in an attempt to get the worst of the sticky meat out. 

“I’ve no doubt of that, it seems you’ve had plenty in Erebor to keep you sharp.”

“Actually, the dragon wasn’t very frightening until you came and woke it up.” Bilbo pointed out before he could control his mouth.

Fíli nearly choked on his stew as all three dwarves roared with laughter. Bilbo looked to Dirac, but all she did was give a rattling sigh. “Bilbo Baggins,” Balin chuckled, “Friends with ravens and dragons.”

“Well, now, I wasn’t friends with the old wyrm,” it was Bilbo’s turn to roll his eyes, “It was like having a particularly absent neighbour.”

“Yes,” Fíli nodded sagely, “We’ve all had our share of absent fire-breathing neighbours.”

Balin reached out to kick the nearest prince, “Alright, enough teasing our host and finish your bowl, I know Dis taught you better.”

“Dis?” Bilbo asked.

“Our Amad,” Fíli answered him between bites.

Bilbo smiled uncertainly, “If you’re still hungry when you’re done, I’ve got enough for at least three more helpings.”

“_Three?_” Kíli gasped, eyes wide, “Whatever do you expect to do with it all!”

Bilbo raised an eyebrow, “Eat it?”

Fíli let out another bark of laughter, “Mahal’s hammer, we should show you to the elves and see how their lembas bread fares then.”

“What is lembas bread?” Bilbo asked interestedly, watching the princes shovel stew into their mouths. “I heard you talking about it before. It’s not in any of my recipe books.”

“Lembas bread is of elven make,” Balin grunted. He heaved himself from the armchair and waved Bilbo away when he made to stand as well. After pouring himself another bowl of stew, he fell back into the cushions. “It’s said that one small bite can fill the stomach of a grown man. The elves keep its recipe a secret.”

“That’s amazing!” Bilbo’s were wide. Imagine being full after one bite! Elves truly were extraordinary.

“I’d rather have a feast myself,” Fíli said as haughtily as he could through a mouthful of stew. 

“Oh, a feast!” Bilbo’s excitement was nearly getting away from him, and he had to take a breath to reign it in. “What are they like?”

“What? Feasts?” Kíli stared at him, empty bowl forgotten in his lap. “You’ve never been to a feast?”

Embarrassment made his words sharp, and he ducked his head just in case his eyes flashed as well, “Whose would I have gone to? The dragon’s?”

There was a moment of silence before the princes were off again, howling with laughter. It was several minutes before either of them could speak. Kíli could barely hold his bowl still stood and refilled it.

“Does that mean you’ve never had boar either?” Fíli asked, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.

“I only eat what grows in my garden and what the ravens can carry back in my traps. Pheasant, rabbit, fish, the occasional squirrel. Dirac brought me a fox once.”

Dirac gave low rattled caw of acknowledgement, now focused on eating the last of the meat from her bowl. 

“Just you wait, Mister Boggins,” Fíli said confidently with eyes on his food, “Once Erebor is safe, we’ll have the largest feast you can imagine.”

Worry creased Bilbo’s brow. He tried not to think of what he was going to be doing a handful hours from then, or of Hörk who must have been halfway to the elven host by now and what might happen if this idea of his didn’t work and he ended up a prisoner of elves, or worse.

“You’ll see when our reinforcements arrive, Mister Baggins, everything will turn out in the end. The mountain will be safe.” Balin waved away Bilbo’s worries with a confident hand. 

Bilbo narrowed his eyes at the patronizing air and opened his mouth, ready to retort, when Kíli exclaimed, “Mister Boggins! Dirac says you’ve never had _pie_.”

He blinked at them, “No, I haven’t. Not enough flour for the dough you see. And I don’t have much in the way of baking pans and no oven to speak of. All the cookbooks I have, say an oven is a necessity for baking.” He shook the wistfulness from his face and smiled at his guests, “I’m rather excited to see the kitchens of Erebor. When I was little, Roäc told me they had five stone ovens as big as three dwarves that fed the entirety of the mountain on feast days.”

“Sometimes more,” Balin chuckled, “I remember the feasts Thrór would have, inviting the men of Dale and even the elves of the Greenwood. It’s a wonder he wasn’t chased out by the cooks and bakers.”

They spent a while listening to Balin describing how grand the Durin’s Day feasts were during the early years of Thrór’s reign. The way he described the tastes and smells of the food was almost enough for Bilbo to imagine he was there himself. 

After that, the conversation flowed smoothly into stories of living in Erebor before the dragon came, and then the princes began a re-enactment of some mischief they did in Ered Luin.

“Where is Ered Luin?” Bilbo asked, leaning forward eagerly. “I didn’t see it in any of my maps.”

Dirac rattled out a chuckle, “Our Mizimith likes his maps.”

He swatted at her half-heartedly, “You’d be too if you were stuck in these rooms for fifty years with no idea of the rest of the world.” He turned his attention back on the dwarves, “Well? Is it a new dwarf stronghold?”

“A very old one, actually,” Balin said, “Mostly abandoned until the Durin’s Folk migrated to the Eastern settlements after Smaug’s attack.” 

“That’s where we grew up,” Kíli said, licking the last of the food from his bowl. “Amad is there now.”

“What’s it like? Ered Luin?”

Kíli’s eyes lit up, “Oh, it’s beautiful! It used to be part of one great mountain range until the end of the first age. Now the Gulf of Lune cuts through it. We live in the southern range on the eastern side. No matter where you’re standing in the valley below, you can always see the Blue Mountains rising up in the distance, glittering in the rising sun.”

“Kee fancies himself a poet,” Fíli teased, but he had a look of nostalgia as well.

“There’s no fancy about it!” Kíli said indignantly, switching from awe to laughter at the drop of a feather. “Who do you think spread those songs about Fíli the First, Fíli the Fair, Fíli the Golden Prince?” Kíli held a hand to the heavens dramatically before breaking character and snorting.

Fíli’s cheeks turned red as he spluttered, “That was _you_? Do you know how much grief I got in Court for that? Months, Kee! _Months!_”

“I thought that was absolutely lovely, Prince Kíli,” Bilbo interjected, smiling softly as he imagined what Ered Luin must look like. Similar to the Weathered Heath maybe? “I’d love to see it someday. When this is all over.” Bilbo refocused on his guests at the prolonged silence following his words. All three dwarves were staring at him with open mouths.

Bilbo was terrified that he’d lost control of his glow until Balin spluttered and tucked into his food intently. The princes turned similar shades of pink and stuttered out phrases that didn’t make much sense at all

“Of course, you can-!”

“I could take-.”

“He means we could-.”

“Well, once Erebor is…”

Dirac was cackling madly as the boys tried to compose themselves. Bilbo brows drew together in confusion. “Dirac, what-?”

Fíli jumped up and took Bilbo’s empty bowl from, still ruddy behind his goatee and glaring at Dirac, “Would you like some more Mister Boggins? This stew is fantastic! As good as Bombur’s, I’d say. And much better than Amad’s.”

“That’s not difficult, though, is it?” Kíli sniggered, earning himself a cuffing from his brother when he joined him beside the pot.

“Your mother doesn’t cook?” Bilbo asked, intrigued. It wasn’t as if he had any frame of reference other than storybooks. In his books, the mother always cooked. Fíli poured the last of the stew into the three bowls, handing them back to Bilbo and Kíli.

The boys shuddered as one. “She does,” Fíli began when he sat to eat again.

“When she’s angry,” Kíli finished with his mouth full.

Bilbo hid his grin behind his spoon as Balin berated the princes for speaking badly of their mother. “I’d like to see either of you help run what’s left of a kingdom and raise two little terrors.”

“Balin,” Kíli gasped with horror, gripping the fabric over his chest in afront, “Don’t fill Mister Boggins’ head with lies!”

Fíli shook his spoon at Bilbo, “Don’t listen to him, Mister Boggins,” he said gravely, “We were an absolute _delight_.”

Bilbo couldn’t possibly hold in his laughter after that. Dirac chimed in with a few comments about raising Bilbo that managed to quiet his own chuckles and start the dwarves up again.

As the laughter died down, Bilbo watched Balin out of the corner of his eye, weighing his words.

“Master Balin, I’m sorry, but I need to ask you something.”

“Hm?”

“I’ve been told the Elvenking is after gold,” Bilbo began, and watched as Balin’s happy demeanour fell away. Dirac shifted uneasily beside Kíli. “But is there something he might want more? Something he’d be willing trade for?” 

Balin sighed, “Well, elves aren’t ones for gold. It’s the white gems that enchant them. Reminds them of their stars, you see.” The old dwarf shifted in his seat and settled back with a groan, “I believe you might benefit a history lesson, Mister Baggins.”

Fíli and Kíli groaned as one. 

“Balin,” Kíli complained.

“Must you?” Fíli finished, before slurping the last of his stew rather loudly.

Dirac’s croak was teasing, “You should hear Mizimith go on about his etiquette books.”

Both boys groaned again.

Balin rolled his eyes, ignored the brothers, and began. “I suppose elves and dwarves have always been at odds with one another. Dwarves were made from the stone by Mahal-.”

“Husband to Yavanna,” Bilbo said.

Balin smiled, sitting up and taking on an air that had all four of his listeners leaning in as well to catch his tale, “Precisely! Mahal created the dwarves but was forced to put them to sleep until Eru’s firstborn, the elves, had awoken. It is said that even then Eru knew their children would be at odds. 

“Through the ages, elves and dwarves have been grudging allies and bitter enemies. And the same is true of the elves of the Greenwood and the dwarves of Erebor. Relations between the kingdoms were good and strong until Thrór’s final years as king. It was long before Smaug ravaged the mountain that King Thranduil came to Erebor with a request. He asked the great smiths of Erebor to fashion a necklace of cascading starlight for his wife. He gave a young Thrór all the materials he would need; the finest raw gold, silver, and some quite marvellous jewels known as White Gems of Lasgalen. You see, Thranduil had a weakness for white gems and these in particular.”

“Amad said Ugmil’ amad called them the Arkenstone’s little sisters because they shone so brightly,” Fíli whispered, breaking Balin’s spell. Dirac took the chance to catch Bilbo’s eye. He could feel his glow rising with his excitement as it would when Roäc would tell stories. Bilbo tried to focus on his breathing and less on the story.

Balin nodded in agreement with Fíli, “And so they were crafted into a necklace said to be just as beautiful as the Elvenqueen was herself. But before they were finished, she perished in battle.”

Forgetting about his breathing, Bilbo gasped like a nestling, “That’s terrible!”

“Indeed, and it took the Elvenking many years before he could bear his grief and come looking for his late wife’s gift.” Balin stroked his beard thoughtfully, “It’s unclear what happened when the king came for his necklace. Some say the Elvenking tried to cheat the dwarves of payment. Others say the necklace was so beautiful that Thrór, in the depths of madness already, could not bear to let it go.”

Madness? Something niggled at the back of Bilbo’s mind.

At this, Balin sat back, releasing Bilbo, Dirac, and the princes from his storytelling, “It was the beginning of the bad blood, I think. Both against elves, and the line of Durin. Dwarves take the business of gems very seriously, of course, and by denying the Elvenking his gems, gems that the king had already paid for, he committed a most grievous slight. Well, it was painfully obvious by then that something was wrong.”

“Wrong?” Bilbo wondered.

“Aye, lad. The gold madness.”

“Dragon-sickness,” Fíli said sombrely. Bilbo’s guests nodded to each other, eerily quiet.

“I’m sorry, dragon-sickness?” Bilbo rubbed his temple, “But the dragon hadn’t come yet.”

Balin’s beard twitched in a smile, “No, the name is rather misleading I’ll admit. Gold madness, or dragon-sickness as they call it nowadays, is a sickness of the mind. It enhances greed and selfishness, turns kin against kin, and makes a dwarf do terrible things that he wouldn’t dream of. The malady… runs strong in line of Durin, unfortunately.”

It clicked. Bilbo blinked. He tried to catch the eye of Fíli or Kíli, anger boiling in his gut, building like lightning, “Is this the curse you two were talking about?” He stood and began to pace, “The Arkenstone’s curse? ‘Breeds mistrust and obsession,’ isn’t that what you said? I can’t believe I didn’t connect the dots earlier.”

Dirac shuffled closer to Bilbo, “Mizimith, calm down.” But Bilbo was looking at the dwarves. All three of whom were watching him with expressions ranging from sombre to stubborn to uncomfortable.

He clapped a hand to his forehead, let out one humourless laugh, “Sweet Yavanna, he’s already sick, isn’t he? That’s why he can’t see reason. That’s why he’s so – so _insufferable_! Can’t you, I don’t know, overrule him? Because he’s going insane-!?” There were so many emotions tangled in his chest he wasn’t sure what would shine through or if he could stop it before it did.

“He is our king!” Fíli interrupted angrily, hands clenched on his knees, staring unseeing into the fire beyond Bilbo, “And our kin! He is stronger than this sickness, and I will not let him lose his birth right when he’s only just reclaimed it!”

“And so, your plan is to die with him? Go along with his suicidal plans? Brilliant!” Bilbo spat before he could control himself. He felt his light flare and shut his eyes tight, trying to reign it in. He took several deep breaths. When he opened his eyes, Fíli’s jaw was still clenched, mouth in a hard line under his moustache. Kíli was staring at him, eyes wide with alarm while the other two avoided his gaze.

Had he seen something? Had Bilbo’s light shown itself?

Everything was quiet for a minute or two, the only sound was the fire in the hearth and the rustle of Dirac’s feathers.

“I’m sorry,” Bilbo clasped both hands together, bowed stiffly, “That was harsh of me. I – I would also do anything for my family. Please, let me get your dishes.” With that, and avoiding Kíli’s eyes, he began to gather the bowls and spoons.

He just wanted the dwarves out of his rooms. It seemed he could only handle any dwarf for so long before he lost his patience and his control.

Balin cleared his throat, “We should be going anyway. Thank you for the meal, Mister Baggins.” He groaned as he got to his feet and began to amble into the library, followed by the two princes. Bilbo put the dishes down by his basin so he could see them out. Dirac lifted herself to follow but Bilbo motioned for her to stay.

A host was required to see his guests out after all.

As Bilbo opened the door to bid them goodbye, the two boys took their places in the doorway and bowed. Kíli spoke first, calmly, “Thank you, Mister Baggins. Sorry again, you know, for what Uncle said yesterday. I hope you’ll let us visit tomorrow?” His eyes were no longer wide and frightened but had a calculating look to them that Bilbo didn’t like any better.

He had a terrible feeling the dwarfling knew something. All because Bilbo couldn’t keep his emotions in check.

Bilbo rubbed at the pounding in his temple again, he didn’t need another thing to worry about, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea just now Prince Kíli, but of course I will consider it.” 

Fíli bow was just as deep despite the irritation Bilbo knew he must feel. However, when he spoke, it was with the tone of a chastened nestling, “I’m sorry I lost my temper, Mister Baggins. We came here to ingratiate ourselves, and it seems we’ve only made things worse. I-,” He looked up and away again, “I seem to have inherited my Uncle’s short fuse.”

Bilbo shook his head, “Don’t worry yourself unduly, Prince Fíli, I’m not usually so susceptible to anger, but it seems you dwarves bring out the worst in me.” He smiled to let the prince know he was teasing. Fíli returned it gratefully and took his similarly grinning brother by the elbow to drag him away down the corridor.

Balin chuckled, “Thank you for the meal, Mister Baggins. I have the feeling I will be seeing you tomorrow.” Balin bowed as well and turned to go.

“Master Balin,” Bilbo reached out a hand to stop the dwarf from leaving. He was all at once struck with the risks of his plan to confront the Elvenking. He wanted to ask the old dwarf for advice but knew that he couldn’t. In the end, he said, “The gems that the Elvenking wanted. Are they still here in the mountain?”

Balin’s gaze was steady on his, his eyes crinkling just the slightest, “Yes, yes they are. We were unable to bring anything but the clothes on our back when we left our home.” Balin glanced down the hallway, the line of his shoulders hardening for a moment before he said offhandedly, “It was a chest full, he gave to Thrór, ’bout the size of a raven I’d say.” Bilbo’s heart raced. Could Balin suspect? “The necklace would probably be in there too now that I think about it. I can’t imagine Smaug being too bothered to open it. In fact, I’m fairly certain I saw it during one of our searches. Near the western side of the treasury.”

They stared at each other for a moment before Balin laid a hand on Bilbo’s shoulder, “You seem like the good sort, Mister Baggins. Your heart’s in the right place. I know we are but acquaintances now, but I think you will find us good friends soon. A common enemy tends to do that. I’d like to think that when our brethren come, we will have more to offer them than our little Company.” Balin winked.

“How do you know they will come?” Bilbo asked quietly, “Your kin from the Iron Hills?”

“Because they are dwarves,” Balin said with the utmost confidence, “And dwarves do not leave their kin to face a battle alone.”

Bilbo nodded thoughtfully. “And when you called them to your side to face a dragon? Where were they then?” When Balin was silent, Bilbo nodded. “I would not place faith in friends such as those,” he said, before shutting the door gently on Balin’s grim face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am horrible at keeping promises obviously. But when was anyone going to tell me how different the grading system is in Scotland vs the US?? I got a 65 on an assignment and had a panic attack because I thought I was failing my Master's program.
> 
> So, I'm thinking that my updates will have to be more spaced out, I totally underestimated how much time my schoolwork would take up. Terribly sorry to get your hopes up. I will let you guys know when I decide. But don't worry! This fic will be completed.
> 
> But for now, enjoy this long chapter! Your comments have seriously helped me stay (mostly) on top of this so thank you, thank you, thank you! Next chapter? Bilbo the Burglar finally appears, muahaha!
> 
> As always, leave a comment on your way out and may you find many happy OTPs and AUs!


	9. An Honest Thief With Good Intentions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We all knew Bilbo was going to be a burglar one way or another.

_"I may be a burglar...but I'm an honest one, I hope, more or less." – _ _J. R. R. Tolkien_

As soon as Bilbo could no longer hear the dwarves’ steps, he took the stew pot and all the bowls and piled them haphazardly by the water basin. He’d deal with them later.

Dirac tracked his movements silently as he made his way into the library and began to climb the shelf built into the western wall. Bilbo didn’t know how the dwarf who’d lived here had gotten to the books that were out of their reach, but he was sure they’d had a more dignified system than scaling the shelves.

“Dirac, have the ravens been inside the mountain since Smaug was killed?”

“Are you really thinking of trying to find the White Gems of Lasgalen? Do you know how large the treasury is? It was a quest in and of itself to find a particular gem even when the dwarves were keeping it organised. Can you even imagine what kind of a mess is down there? After that dragon–?”

“Mister Balin said they found it near the western side.”

“Bilbo, I don’t think you understand just how vague those directions are. The western side could mean the entire western side of the _whole_ _mountain_. And ‘_near’_?”

“Dirac,” Bilbo did not whine, but it was a close thing. He reached the very top shelf and pulled down _Gems and Jewels of the Third Age_. It wasn’t a very thick book. In fact, it was probably the shortest book in his library and the only one he hadn’t read more than twice. He tucked it onto the lowest shelf he could reach and began to climb back down.

Dirac made a noise of annoyance, “Yes, the ravens have been inside the mountain. They’ve been keeping an eye on the dwarves. After that fiasco with the king, we thought it might be best to know their whereabouts.”

“So, it wouldn’t look too odd if some ravens were in the treasury?”

Dirac was silent until Bilbo was back on the floor. “No,” she admitted, shifting her wings, “It wouldn’t look too odd.”

Bilbo snatched the book off the shelf and went back into his bedroom, grinning with the burgeoning glow of a plan, “I think you know what I’m going to ask.”

“You want to send some ravens to scout the treasury before you go down there yourself.” Dirac bobbed her head, “But you’ve never seen it, Bilbo, the treasury is vast. Vast enough to comfortably house a sleeping dragon.”

“Which is why,” Bilbo said, opening the book to show Dirac the drawings inside, “You’re going to be looking for these as well as the White Gems.”

Dirac eyed the sketch of Prince Consort Fror’s Circlet, and Queen Dratli’s Scepter with doubt, “Ravens are known for their memory of word, not form.”

“I know you can do it.”

She scoffed, “Well, I’m not talking about myself, obviously. I’ll have to find other ravens who will be able to keep up with me.”

Bilbo smiled sweetly, “No one can keep up with you, Dirac. You’re the best of all.”

“Tch. You’d do well to remember that,” she said, taking flight through the arch and out over the garden.

She was back within the half-hour, leading a group of younger ravens. They landed around him on the carpet where he was stretched out on his stomach, flipping through the book. The ravens shuffled around and on him, stroking their wings over his arms and cheeks to say hello. Dirac had managed to recruit quite a number of ravens, mostly younger ones. It was only when they settled around him, that he noticed Hörk was with them.

“Hörk!” Bilbo’s glow brightened with excitement, “What news do you have from the Elvenking? Oh, goodness, what am I doing? Here, I’ll get you some water and food first.” He got up to get a cup of water from the basin and to retrieve the bowl of seeds and dried fruit. After such a hurried flight, Hörk certainly deserved a treat.

“Do we get treats too? When we’re done with our mission?” Kirk asked. He was a very young raven, practically a nestling, and not exactly covert. Bilbo eyed Dirac questioningly and Dirac answer him with a croaky chuckle.

“Kirk will serve as a distraction.”

“I’m essential to the mission,” Kirk preened.

Lärc, a female only a little younger than Hörk, raised her head and gave it a little shake; the raven equivalent of rolling her eyes. She addressed Bilbo, “Dirac has told us what to do. We will search the treasury for a chest the size of a raven, filled with white gems. We will also search for other dwarven heirlooms. She said you have drawings. Are these them?” She looked down at the book.

“Yes, here,” Bilbo sat back down and placed the bowl and cup before Hörk, Kirk took the chance to climb into his lap, settling in to listen, “I tried to find items that were important but small. No small task, as the dwarves seem to like a fair amount of opulence.” A round of giggles went through the group, making Bilbo smile as he turned the pages. “I think what we’ll want is Lord Grór’s first dagger, King Thráin I’s pendant, Lord Borin’s courtship necklace and Princess Consort Dravna’s tiara. The chest is going to be the priority, of course, but if you should happen to see these, try to move them as close to the western entrance to the treasury as you can without getting caught. Master Balin told me the western side of the treasury is where we should find the chest.” Bilbo waited while the ravens examined the sketches of the tiara and courtship necklace before flipping to the others.

Bilbo ran his fingers through Kirk’s feathers while he thought, and the ravens studied the pictures. “Do you think some of these might be elsewhere in the mountain?” he asked Dirac. She shook her head before he was done speaking.

“Smaug may have left your rooms alone, Mizimith, but he searched out every gem and jewel in the mountain and brought it his new hoard in the treasury,” she tossed her head, “Worthless wyrm.”

While it only took the ravens moments to remember spoken messages, it took them much longer to remember what to look for. Finally, though, Lärc said, “Alright, Mizimith, we’re ready. Kirk, stop lazing about.”

Kirk croaked indignantly, “I’m not lazy. I’m _essential_.” But he ran his sharp beak softly against Bilbo’s cheek and took off for the library. Bilbo followed to the hallway door, the other ravens trailing behind.

He cracked the door open and peeked into the hallway, worry gnawing at him. When he saw no one, he opened the door wider and gestured for his family to go, “Good luck and stay safe.”

The ravens, with Kirk and Lärc in the lead, left with a chorus of “Goodbye, Bilbo!” and “Don’t worry, Mizimith!” Bilbo watched them disappear one by one into the darkness, far beyond where his anxious light could reach.

Hörk made a soft noise to attract his attention. He had moved to the arm of one of Bilbo’s library chairs, Dirac on the other.

“So?” Bilbo said, chest tight and skin glowing with anticipation as well as worry now. He sat in the chair across from Hörk, “What did Thranduil say? Is he willing to meet?”

It did not escape his notice that he may have just sent his family off to face short-tempered, greedy, _armed_ dwarves for nothing. In fact, that would probably fuel his nervous light for hours to come.

Hörk puffed his feathers as he began to speak in Sindarin, “Thranduil, King of the Greenwood and the Woodland Realm agrees that in the face of a foe so great, it would be wise to put aside past grievances. He agrees to provide aid to the dwarves who dwell under the Lonely Mountain.”

He paused while Bilbo made a noise of triumph and his light flared, “Oh, thank Yavanna! At the very least, he’s willing to listen. What else did he say?”

Dirac gave Bilbo what could only be a look of fond annoyance as Hörk continued unperturbed, “However, the Elvenking would request certain conditions be met. He requests that his host be allowed to settle within the mountain, remunerations be made to Mirkwood for damages caused by the dwarves’ departure and the share of the gold that was promised to the people of the Esgaroth be paid. The King recognizes that some of these conditions cannot be met until our foe is vanquished. King Thranduil and his host estimate they will arrive in the ruins of Dale tomorrow morning. He looks forward to meeting with the dwarven representative.”

Bilbo paced, one hand tugging at the curls above his ear, “Well, most of those demands are reasonable. But if he thinks Thorin Oakenshield,” he said the name like a curse, “is going to allow him inside the mountain he’s madder than the dwarf himself.”

Dirac made a noise of agreement, “He is probably expecting you – or ‘Thorin’ as he understands the case to be – to refuse such a request, thereby making his others much more reasonable.”

Bilbo cocked his head, “The ones he’s already listed? I wouldn’t think those too unreasonable in the first place. The remunerations bit perhaps, as I don’t know _why_ he imprisoned the dwarves. Though, I’m sure Oakenshield said _something_ to make things worse. But that can be easily paid with the White Gems of Lasgalen.”

“I believe it far more likely he will request to set up camp right outside the dwarves’ front door.”

“It does seem better in comparison, though I’m sure Master Oakenshield will not be happy with it.” He sighed, “But either way, this is a starting point.”

“When will you leave to meet him?” Hörk asked.

Bilbo stood and made his way into the bedroom, “How long do you think it will take me to get what I need and make it down the mountain to Dale?”

Hörk and Dirac both glided in to land on his bed, Hörk stumbling a little on the unstable surface. “You could make it to the ruins of Dale in an hour or two on foot,” Hörk allowed.

Dirac bobbed her head and resettled her wings, “_But_ it may take you an hour just to take your little detour to the treasury. I would leave just after sunset, as the dwarves’ watch is changing, and most are eating. The others will have found something by then.”

It sounded smart, and Bilbo had no reason to disagree even if his insides were jittering with anticipation. “I guess there’s not much else to do but wait...” Bilbo’s hands twisted and turned each other as he crossed to the wardrobe. He pulled out a green waistcoat and set it aside for the morning. When he realised he was lingering, running his hands over it again and again, he moved to the end of the bed. He took the burgundy travelling coat that he’d thrown onto his bedpost outside and beat the rest of the dust off it. “How long do you think it will be until Lärc and the others find something?” he called back.

Dirac answered him, sounding tired, “The treasury is large, Mizimith. It will be a while yet.”

Bilbo huffed and beat the coat once more before bringing it in to lay it down beside the waistcoat on his settee. He next set himself upon the task of cleaning the dishes left by his guests. The way his hands searched for something to do reminded him again of why Roäc and Dirac had decided against telling him about the dwarves sooner.

He hated waiting.

When he was done with the dishes and had tidied his bedroom of the bits and bobs that had cluttered it during the day, Hörk and Dirac were already asleep; heads tucked beneath their wings. Finally feeling the weight of sleep on him, Bilbo took off his waistcoat, shirt, and trousers, put them away and pulled on his shift. The ravens resettled as he climbed under the covers. Dirac placed herself between his calves, and Hörk shuffled up to his hip.

Their presence helped him a little, but Bilbo still spent some time thinking about the meeting with the Elvenking and his family combing the treasury many levels below before finally drifting off.

/^\

The next morning, Bilbo woke up surrounded by many more ravens than when he went to sleep.

He lay there, enjoying the weight of his family around him and the soft almost indiscernible sound of rustling feathers as some of the younger ravens shifted in their sleep. Smiling, he let the draw of sleep pull him under for a few more minutes.

The second time he opened his eyes, which couldn’t have been much later with the way the sun was still barely touching his garden and slanting into the room, Kirk was sitting on his chest and poking his beak into the soft skin of his neck. Bilbo let out an involuntary giggle, swatting the offending raven away.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked through a tremendous yawn. His mind always was slower to awaken in the mornings.

“We finished searching the treasury in the early morning. The nestlings couldn’t have made it back to Ravenhill,” Kirk said, “Have you got breakfast for us?”

“Let me see what I can dredge up,” Bilbo answered with a sleepy nod. Kirk scuttled off his chest, and Bilbo disentangled himself from the mound of feathered bodies, careful to avoid crushing anyone. On his feet, he stretched his hands above his head and pushed up onto his furry toes, an involuntary sound escaping him when his still sore muscles strained. He set to stoking the fire first, already feeling a bit of the winter chill coming through the archway, and then went about putting together a bowl of seeds and dried meat for the ravens. Once done, he placed that on the hearth and began on his own breakfast.

Going through his bowls of harvest fruits and vegetables he set aside a few of the quail eggs his ravens had brought him last week, a potato, a tomato, a bell pepper, and a bowl of late blackberries. The berries he ate as he sliced and diced the vegetables. The eggs were thrown into the heated pan above his fire, along the potatoes to be fried. Once that was all sizzling Bilbo tossed in the sliced tomato and peppers, sprinkling in spices from the last of his September harvest. Once it was all scrambled nicely, he removed it from the fire and scooped it onto one of the plates he snagged from the shelf. He spooned tea leaves into a cup and replaced the skillet over the fire with the kettle filled with water.

While he busied himself, the ravens clamber clumsily out of his bed in singles and pairs, cleaning themselves and each other as they picked at the bowl Bilbo put on the hearth.

With a plate of breakfast in his lap and his tea steeping, Bilbo finally found himself awake enough to think about the journey ahead. He wondered if perhaps he should have grabbed a pack – or made one, as the case may be. There weren’t any travelling packs in his rooms, and he’d had half a century to look for one. He might have enough fabric leftover from the raven’s last supply run to sew larger pockets into his trousers. That’d have to do.

He might as well review his elven etiquette books. Wouldn’t want his first meeting with the Elvenking to go as badly as his meeting with the dwarven one.

He sat there, in his armchair by the fire, looking out into his garden and beyond to the slice of the Desolation he can make out from his seat. The sounds of his family eating around him, the feel of Dirac’s feathered body against his arm, and the warmth of the tea when he picked it up to press against his breastbone and breathed it in were enough to have him glowing softly in the morning sun, lighting up feathers and stone walls alike.

When he was small, it was times like these that he used to imagine what would happen if the dwarves came home. Early in the morning, or late at night, when the world seemed to be holding its breath, and he was full of good food and surrounded by family, he’d indulge in silly little dreams where the dwarves came back to his mountain with banners held high and war songs so loud he could hear them from his garden. They’d defeat the dragon, or maybe the dragon was already dead, and they’d find him waiting in his rooms. Then he’d go on marvellous adventures to see elves and men and the other dwarven strongholds. And perhaps they’d travel far enough that they’d find someone who looked like Bilbo. Someone who could tell him what he was or where he came from and how he’d ended up in the mountain when none of the ravens had ever been able to do so.

Bilbo shook himself and took a sip of his tea. He’d stopped dreaming of things like that years ago. He might have still hoped for something of the sort – something a bit more realistic – but it rarely left him sighing like a foolish nestling anymore.

Of course, now look where he was. Preparing to go to a secret parley with the Elvenking. Getting into fights with the King Under the Mountain. Stealing from the treasury. Without him noticing, his light had grown softer with the turn of his thoughts before it disappeared back under his skin.

"Lärc? Kirk? What did you manage to find?”

Kirk looked up from his place on the hearth where he’d been preening, “The White Gems were the easiest. I saw them almost as soon as we entered the treasury, sitting right by the western entrance.”

Bilbo blinked in surprise. He looked to Dirac, “You think Master Balin moved it?”

“He did seem rather unsuspicious of your questions. And happy to answer them.”

“Is that so bad?” Lärc asked as she finished cleaning her feathers, “It wouldn’t hurt to have some of the dwarves on our side.”

“Not so bad, but rather too good. He’s quite close to Thorin Oakenshield,” Bilbo mused between sips of tea. “But I don’t suppose he could be doing this on his King’s orders. Oakenshield doesn’t really seem like the subversive type, does he? Too brash.” And not nearly clever enough, he thought rudely.

“And what would he gain from it anyway?” Dirac puts in, “Catching you stealing?”

His skin flickered with the nervousness and guilt that churned in Bilbo’s stomach along with his tea and breakfast, “I’m only stealing the White Gems, the rest I’m simply borrowing. And really if what Balin said is true, they’re not really _his_ anyway, are they?”

Dirac ignored him, “The only thing he could gain from this is to make sure his dwarves disapprove of you. Casting you as a burglar would certainly do that. But I think you’re right, Mizimith, Thorin Oakenshield wouldn’t be the kind of dwarf to do such a thing.”

“As Kirk was saying,” Lärc continued, “We found the gems almost immediately, but we only managed to find one of the heirlooms you had us memorize, Mizimith. The tiara of the Princess Consort Dravna. We placed it close to the chest. You should be able to find both easily with one of us guiding you.”

The nerves were channelled into sudden anticipation thrumming in his toes and fingertips, “When should we be off?” Bilbo asked. He hopped up from his chair and began tidying up from breakfast, taking both his bowl and the one from the hearth over to the water basin so he could wash them.

“I think we will leave just before the dwarves eat in the evening. That will give you enough time to make it to the treasury, outside, and down to the ruins of Dale.”

Bilbo gasped, “Outside!” He spun to face the ravens, all of whom were staring at him as though he’d spouted black speech. He slapped a wet hand against his temple, heedless of the water dripping down his cheek. “Dirac, how do we get outside!? Oh, by the grace of the Green Lady, how could I have been so stupid!” Dirac let out a hacking laugh which only gained force when Bilbo glared at her, “Dirac, I’m serious! Here I’ve been fretting about getting in and out of the treasury, and I don’t even know how to get _out of the_ _mountain_! It’s not like we can go out any of the gates! What are we going to do!?”

The other ravens were chortling now as well, and Bilbo felt his ears heat with chagrin, “Stop that!” His lips were starting to curl against his wishes. He’d always found the ravens’ laughter to be infectious.

“Mizimith, I found the dwarves’ secret door, _days_ ago,” Dirac subsided into rough giggles.

“I don’t know what you found so amusing,” Bilbo said archly, turning back to the dishes.

“I found your panic rather amusing.”

Bilbo sent her a weak glare over his shoulder, “You’re awful.”

“Oh, come on, Mizimith, we all could use something to brighten our day,” Kirk called out, “And your always good for a laugh.”

There was the sound of scuffling, and Bilbo was sure a few ravens had smothered Kirk. He grinned privately at the bowl he was drying.

“In any case, Mizimith,” Dirac said, amusement still in her croaky voice, “I’ll be able to lead you out of the mountain. You’ll be meeting with the elves by midnight for certain.”

Bilbo rather though the day would crawl by as time had seemed to do after the dragon had fallen, and he’d been waiting for the dwarves to find him. He wasn’t sure if he was pleased to find that this wasn’t the case. The ravens, sans Dirac, left for Ravenhill not long after breakfast and Bilbo spent most of the day rereading his elvish etiquette books between munching on fruits and vegetables and needlessly checking and double-checking his belongings for the short journey. Around lunchtime, he sat down with his needle and thread to make the pockets a little larger on his trousers. It was a rough job, but it'd do for one trip in and out of the mountain.

He was sitting in the library, travelling coat already in place and one hand tugging at the locks of hair over his ear when Lärc winged in just as the sun was beginning to sink below the horizon.

“Ready, Mizimith?”

“Shouldn’t we wait for them to begin their evening meal? The sun’s only just starting to set.”

Dirac rose and shook herself from where she’d been alternately preening and napping, “It will take a bit to reach the treasury, we should arrive just in time to catch it without a guard. Prepare for a lot more stairs, Mizimith.”

Bilbo sighed in dismay, “This is a terrible idea.”

While Lärc’s short laugh wasn’t unkind, it didn’t cheer him up either. He opened the hall door, allowing the ravens to lead the way before following them into the dark hallway.

He cast a nervous light throughout the winding journey. Though the treasury was reasonably easy to get to if one were a dragon and could smash through the throne room and further down, the path was quite a bit more challenging to navigate when one required the use of stairs. Dirac took him away from the centre of the mountain and the spiderwebbing walkways and the crushed marketplace. Instead, she led him through tiny passageways around the outer edge of the mountain, curling steadily toward the west. Finally, they came to a long, curved hallway that seemed to be at the very bottom of the mountain

Bilbo might not have known which archway led to the treasury if an oddly familiar golden glow hadn’t shone from just beyond it. The light, he thought idly, kind of did remind him of his own. No wonder the ravens called him Mizimith. But it was colder somehow. It lacked feeling. When he stepped into the space, his mouth dropped open. Well, it was certainly large enough to comfortably house a sleeping dragon. There were archways like the one he’d come through, high along the walls, leading to nowhere but empty air. Trick doorways to ward off thieves like him, he suspected. He couldn’t make out the entrance on the eastern wall – he could barely make out the east wall at all past the gleaming gold – but the door he’d come out of had a set of stairs leading down into the piles of gold. There were no statues here but colossal columns that rose into the darkness above them, supporting what remained of throne room pathways. Bilbo didn’t feel the same gut-wrenching grief he had upon first seeing the scars Smaug had left in the centre of the mountain where there had been visible signs of life before the wyrm. There were no scars here but a callous disarray of items that were supposed to be valuable. It struck Bilbo as wrong for the gems and coins to be scattered about as though they were merely bits of a nest that Smaug would soon be returning to.

Dirac and Lärc were right for them to have left so early. There was no one around that Bilbo could see or hear. In a space like the cavernous treasury, Bilbo was sure he would’ve heard a needle drop on the far side.

The ravens circled once to check for prying eyes just in case, before leading Bilbo down the small set of stairs and around a large hill of jewels and to a simple but sturdy chest the size of a raven. It had been set up against the rest of the treasure as though someone had tried to hide it very poorly. A gaudy tiara was on top of it.

“Well, that was rather easy,” Bilbo muttered, keeping his voice low.

“You sound disappointed, Mizimith,” Lärc said, hopping off the chest as Bilbo knelt beside it.

“Wanted all the excitement of a proper burglar, did you?” Dirac teased, her talons skittering on the stone floor.

Bilbo didn’t bother to respond. Who knew how much time he had before the dwarves came back? He picked up the tiara gently, careful of its heavy gems. “Will it break?” he asked worriedly.

Both ravens gave him what could be considered disbelieving looks if one grew up with ravens. “It’s _dwarf-made_,” Dirac said. Bilbo rolled his eyes and pocketed the thing.

He turned his attention to the chest. At first, he simply attempted to lift it, but the thing wouldn’t even budge. Sighing, he said, “I suppose it was too much to ask for these gems to weigh nothing at all. I’ll just have to take some to the Elvenking as proof and return for the rest later.” He considered it, “With some help.”

Lärc shuffled closer to get a better look, “Do not take the necklace. Take a handful of gems as proof, but I fear that the dwarves might notice the necklace disappearing.”

“In all this?” Bilbo waved around to the enormous piles of treasure taking up what must surely be half of the width of the mountain.

“Never take a coin from a dragon’s hoard,” Dirac said sadly, “For they know every one like the scales on their hide.”

Bilbo flipped the simple catches along the lid’s rim, “But dwarves aren’t dragons.” But Dirac didn’t respond. She and Lärc huddled in close to peer at The White Gems of Lasgalen. Bilbo lifted the lid.

The chest was about a third full of uncut sparkling jewels, and atop them lay a magnificent necklace. The Gems seemed to produce light rather than reflect it. Unlike the heavy royal jewels that Bilbo had spent hours pouring over in his books, the necklace was a delicate web of silver tree boughs and glowing gem-made leaves with falling drops of starlight leading to a large white gem cradled in silver leaves. The net of spun silver clasps appeared complicated, and Bilbo was cautious about disentangling it from the remaining gems. He thought it would have made a wonderful gift for an Elvenqueen once upon a time.

“Someone’s coming!” Dirac’s whisper jolted Bilbo from contemplation, and he dropped the necklace.

As if Dirac had summoned them, Bilbo heard voices in the hall outside the archway through which he’d come. It was a voice he didn’t recognize, singing a haunting tune. He was frozen for a moment, terrified that the dwarf would come into the treasury, round the corner and find him. His light flashed violently with his panic. He had to close his eyes and force himself to calm down lest it gave them away. While he was focusing inward, Dirac said something he couldn’t hear to Lärc. When he opened his eyes again, it was to catch the edge of her wing as she flew back around the stack and presumably into the hallway outside the treasury.

The sounds of footsteps and singing cut off abruptly, “And what are you doing down here?”

“I was looking for dwarves. Is it true you killed the dragon?” That was Lärc’s voice, Bilbo was sure, but he didn’t think he’d ever heard it sound so young before.

“Er… not really,” the dwarf sounded surprised.

“Not really? Does that mean you didn’t kill the dragon?” Bilbo carefully picked up several of the uncut gems, as Lärc spoke, slipping them into his empty pocket.

“Well, we helped, I suppose.” He closed the lid slowly, carefully, not bothering to latch it shut again.

“My brothers said you just made it angry.”

“Well, we helped with that too.” The footsteps started up again, continuing past the archway.

“Did it take you a long time to travel here?”

“Quite a long time, yes.”

“How long is a long time?”

“Don’t you have brothers to get back to?”

Bilbo stepped carefully around the pile of gold and up the stairs, Dirac gliding in circles silently. He peeked right, just catching a red-haired three-pointed head turning the corner farther down the hall, Lärc trailing just behind saying, “They’re not very interesting. Do you have brothers?”

“Unfortunately…”

Bilbo strained his ears until he couldn’t make out even a hint of conversation. After several tense moments, he released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, waving Dirac down.

“He’s gone. That was much too close. Which way to the door?”

“This way.” Dirac took off the way they had come before, heading away from Lärc and the dwarf. Bilbo didn’t waste time with a response, trotting to keep up with Dirac’s speed. They didn’t speak as Dirac led them through another series of winding passages, curving back the way they’d come but heading upwards a bit too steeply for Bilbo’s taste. They have to stop only once more, Dirac nearly taking out Bilbo’s eye as she herded him into a small corridor quite suddenly to avoid two more dwarves; the widest dwarf and the one with the strange hat. They were talking jovially about cooking and didn’t even cast an eye toward the darkened hallway and the column therein where Bilbo had hidden.

Once they were out of earshot, Dirac didn’t waste time in taking off once again. Bilbo found himself almost lulled into a trance by the monotonous halls and the beginnings of soreness he could feel in his legs. He found himself pondering the dwarves again as he was wont to do lately. Had they felt the same mix of excitement and trepidation running through these same halls to face a dragon, to take back their home?

Finally, he and Dirac came to a low rough passageway, so unlike all the crumbling halls above where it was apparent that care had gone into every arch and pillar. The ceiling was low here, so low that Bilbo’s curls brushed it, and it slanted oddly as though the walls it was resting on were uneven. It went on only a little way before they came to a wide exit that showed a sharp turn left and from which he could feel a cold breeze. Like the rest of the hallway, the stone was rough and unfinished, almost lopsided.

There in the stone, was an inscription in Khuzdul. Bilbo whispered the words aloud, “Herein lies the seventh kingdom of Durin’s folk. May the Heart of the Mountain unite all dwarves in defence of this home.” The words made something vast and depthless open up in his chest. It might have been hope, or it might have been the feeling that he had forgotten something very important. His light shimmered against the walls in an oddly foreboding way.

He cleared his throat, “Heart of the Mountain?” The name rang some far-off bell in Bilbo’s memory. Perhaps he’d read something of it in one of his many books or heard it from the ravens or the dwarves…? Below the inscription was a carving of a throne and above it a shining star. Bilbo found it curious that dwarves would carve a star. He’d always thought them to be more of an elvish fancy.

It could be the Arkenstone, he realized belatedly. The dwarves he’d met certainly seemed obsessed with it enough. Or maybe it was something metaphorical, a symbol of the dwarven kings’ greatness. Who knew what was going on inside royal dwarrow minds?

Dirac still hadn’t answered, and when Bilbo looked, she had already winged out of the cramped passageway.

With one last breath, he looked at the path ahead and took his first steps outside his mountain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WAIT BEFORE YOU GO!!! Please take this survey!! https://stirling.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/fanfic_tradbooks
> 
> So I know you'd like to burn me at the stake for basically disappearing but I promise to all deities included that I will not abandon this fic! It's my baby.  
But... I do have a favour to ask? I'm finally in the home stretch of my school days: my master's dissertation. After this? Goodbye homework, hello 9-5 workday (hopefully). To finish my dissertation I need participants for my survey. It's focused on the fanfiction community so good news! YOU'RE ALL INVITED! :)
> 
> **It'll take like 2 minutes and it's completely anonymous, here's the link again and you have my eternal gratitude!!!**  
https://stirling.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/fanfic_tradbooks
> 
> Also, did you guys know that technically - for this story at least - Bilbo is a thief instead of a burglar bc he technically didn't break in anywhere? Smh so off-brand
> 
> Leave a comment on your way out and may you find many happy OTPs and AUs!


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